Henry Ward Beecher

The thankful heart will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings.

The unthankful heart... discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!

October is nature's funeral month. Nature glories in death more than in life. The month of departure is more beautiful than the month of coming - October than May. Every green thin loves to die in bright colors.

As the imagination is set to look into the invisible and immaterial, it seems to attract something of their vitality; and though it can give nothing to the body to redeem it from years, it can give to the soul that freshness of youth in old age which is even more beautiful than youth in the young.

Living is death; dying is life. We are not what we appear to be. On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that citizens; on this side orphans, on that children.

To the great tree-loving fraternity we belong. We love trees with universal and unfeigned love, and all things that do grow under them or around them - the whole leaf and root tribe. Not alone when they are in their glory, but in whatever state they are - in leaf, or rimed with frost, or powdered with snow, or crystal-sheathed in ice, or in severe outline stripped and bare against a November sky - we love them.

It is the triumph of civilization that at last communities have obtained such a mastery over natural laws that they drive and control them. The winds, the water, electricity, all aliens that in their wild form were dangerous, are now controlled by human will, and are made useful servants.

Men strengthen each other in their faults. Those who are alike associate together, repeat the things which all believe, defend and stimulate their common faults of disposition, and each one receives from the others a reflection of his own egotism.

The test of Christian character should be that a man is a joy-bearing agent to the world.

Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality.

You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave.

The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.

Repentance may begin instantly, but reformation often requires a sphere of years.

There is a temperate zone in the mind, between luxurious indolence and exacting work; and it is to this region, just between laziness and labor, that summer reading belongs.

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.

The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.

The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret of outward success.

It is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.

All words are pegs to hang ideas on.

Love is the wine of existence.

The man who perceives life only with his eye, his ear, his hand, and his tongue, is but little higher than the ox or an intelligent dog; but he who has imagination sees things around and above him, as the angels see them.