Quotes by Henry Ward Beecher

God made man to go by motives, and he will not go without them, any more than a boat without steam or a balloon without gas.

The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.

To array a mans will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine.

Pride slays thanksgiving, but a humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow. A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.

Well married a person has wings, poorly married shackles.

I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note - torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.

God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offense into everlasting forgiveness.

Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is the best ending for one.

It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.

In this world, full often, our joys are only the tender shadows which our sorrows cast.

The mothers heart is the childs schoolroom.

The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.

Gambling with cards or dice or stocks is all one thing. Its getting money without giving an equivalent for it.

The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

What we call wisdom is the result of all the wisdom of past ages. Our best institutions are like young trees growing upon the roots of the old trunks that have crumbled away.

Laughter is day, and sobriety is night; a smile is the twilight that hovers gently between both, more bewitching than either.

It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.

Success is full of promise till one gets it, and then it seems like a nest from which the bird has flown.