Henry Ward Beecher

The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right.

A man who cannot get angry is like a stream that cannot overflow, that is always turbid. Sometimes indignation is as good as a thunderstorm in summer, clearing and cooling the air.

No one can deal with the hearts of men unless he has the sympathy which is given by love.

We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.

No man can tell if he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.

There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.

Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith. We should live for the future, and yet should find our life in the fidelities of the present; the last is only the method of the first.

We not only live among men, but there are airy hosts, blessed spectators, sympathetic lookers-on, that see and know and appreciate our thoughts and feelings and acts.

When a man sells eleven ounces for twelve, he makes a compact with the devil, and sells himself for the value of an ounce.

When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.

O Lord God, we pray that we may be inspired to nobleness of life in the least things. May we dignify all our daily life. May we set such a sacredness upon every part of our life, that nothing shall be trivial, nothing unimportant, and nothing dull, in the daily round.

Fear secretes acids; but love and trust are sweet juices.

Prayer covers the whole of man's life. There is no thought, feeling, yearning, or desire, however low, trifling, or vulgar we may deem it, which if it affects our real interest or happiness, we may not lay before God and be sure of sympathy.

A conservative young man has wound up his life before it was unreeled. We expect old men to be conservative but when a nation's young men are so, its funeral bell is already rung.

Business men are to be pitied who do not recognize the fact that the largest side of their secular business is benevolence. ... No man ever manages a legitimate business in this life without doing indirectly far more for other men than he is trying to do for himself.

But when we borrow trouble, and look forward into the future to see what storms are coming, and distress ourselves before they come as to how we shall avert them if they ever do come, we lose our proper trustfulness in God. When we torment ourselves with imaginary dangers, or trials, or reverses, we have already parted with that perfect love which casteth out fear.

I would rather speak the truth to ten men than blandishments and lying to a million. Try it, ye who think there is nothing in it! Try what it is to speak with God behind you, to speak so as to be only the arrow in the bow which the Almighty draws.

If one, then, asks me the meaning of our flag, I say to him, It means just what Concord and Lexington meant, what Bunker Hill meant; it means the whole glorious Revolutionary War, which was, in short, the rising up of a valiant young people against an old tyranny, to establish the most momentous doctrine that the world had ever known - the right of men to their own selves and to their liberties.

What if you have seen it before, ten thousand times over? An apple tree in full blossom is like a message, sent fresh from heaven to earth, of purity and beauty.

When God thought of mother, He must have laughed with satisfaction, and framed it quickly - so rich, so deep, so divine, so full of soul, power, and beauty, was the conception.

The babe at first feeds upon the mother's bosom, but it is always on her heart.