Henry Ward Beecher

Walking humbly, you are more of a man than you were when you walked proudly.

If you want your neighbor to know what Christ will do for him, let the neighbor see what Christ has done for you.

There is no liberty to men whose passions are stronger than their religious feelings; there is no liberty to men in whom ignorance predominates over knowledge; there is no liberty to men who know not how to govern themselves.

True elegance becomes the more so as it approaches simplicity.

Newspapers are the schoolmasters of the common people.

That endless book, the newspaper, is our national glory.

That energy which makes a child hard to manage is the energy which afterwards makes him a manager of life.

A republican government in a hundred points is weaker than an autocratic government; but in this one point it is the strongest that ever existed — it has educated a race of men that are men.

The prouder a man is, the more he thinks he deserves, and the more he thinks he deserves, the less he really does deserve.

We should live and labor in our time that what came to us as a seed may go to the next generation as blossom, and what came to us as blossom, may go to them as fruit. This is what we mean by progress.

I never know how to worship until I know how to love; and to love I must have something that I can put my arms around, — something that, touching my heart, shall leave not the chill of ice, but the warmth of summer.

Our sweetest experiences of affection are meant to be suggestions of that realm which is the home of the heart.

Today is a goblet day. The whole heavens have been mingled with exquisite skill to a delicious flavor, and the crystal cup put to every lip. Breathing is like ethereal drinking. It is a luxury simply to exist.

All higher motives, ideals, conceptions, sentiments in a man are of no account if they do not come forward to strengthen him for the better discharge of the duties which devolve upon him in the ordinary affairs of life.

The best stock a man can invest in, is the stock of a farm; the best shares are plow shares; and the best banks are the fertile banks of a rural stream; the more these are broken the better dividends they pay.

Ignorance is the womb of monsters.

Like a bird she seems to wear gay plumage unconsciously, as if it grew upon her.

As plants take hold, not for the sake of staying, but only that they may climb higher, so it is with men. By every part of our nature we clasp things above us, one after another, not for the sake of remaining where we take hold, but that we may go higher.

If we would have anything of benefit, we must earn it, and earning it become shrewd, inventive, ingenious, active, enterprising.

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.

The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance.