Henry Ward Beecher

Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.

The real man is one who always finds excuses for others, but never excuses himself.

In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.

A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life.

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.

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

It's easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.

The little troubles and worries of life may be as stumbling blocks in our way, or we may make them stepping-stones to a nobler character and to Heaven. Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.

Difficulties are God's errands; and when we are sent upon them, we should esteem it a proof of God's confidence.

Nobody ever sees truth except in fragments.

No man rides so high and in such good company as the man that allies himself to a truth.

We ought to be ten times as hungry for knowledge as for food for the body.

Never be grandiloquent when you want to drive home a searching truth. Don't whip with a switch that has the leaves on, if you want it to tingle.

Do not be troubled because you have not great virtues. God made a million spears of grass where He made one tree. The earth is fringed and carpeted, not with forests, but with grasses. Only have enough of little virtues and common fidelities, and you need not mourn because you are neither a hero or a saint.

Our days are a kaleidoscope. Every instant a change takes place in the contents. New harmonies, new contrasts, new combinations of every sort. Nothing ever happens twice alike. The most familiar people stand each moment in some new relation to each other, to their work, to surrounding objects. The most tranquil house, with the most serene inhabitants, living upon the utmost regularity of system, is yet exemplifying infinite diversities.

The meanest, most contemptible kind of praise is that which first speaks well of a man, and then qualifies it with a But.

See to it that each hour's feelings, and thoughts, and actions are pure and true; then will your life be such.

Nothing dies so hard, or rallies so often as intolerance.

Some have supposed that the mosquito is of a devout turn, and never will partake of a meal without first saying grace. The devotions of some men are but a preface to blood-sucking.

The Bible is like a telescope. If a man looks through his telescope, then he sees worlds beyond; but, if he looks at his telescope, then he does not see anything but that.

Liberty is the soul's right to breathe.