Henry Ward Beecher

Any man can work when every stroke of his hands brings down the fruit rattling from the tree ... but to labor in season and out of season, under every discouragement... that requires a heroism which is transcendent.

A man's ledger does not tell what he is, or what he is worth. Count what is in man, not what is on him, if you would know what he is worth-whether rich or poor.

It is the end of art to inoculate men with the love of nature. But those who have a psssion for nature in the natural way, need no pictures nor gallereies. Spring is their designer, and the whole year their artist.

Conceited men often seem a harmless kind of men, who, by an overweening self-respect, relieve others from the duty of respecting them at all.

God's providence is on the side of clear heads.

The beginning is the promise of the end.

No man is such a conqueror, as the one that has defeated himself.

Poverty is very good in poems but very bad in the house; very good in maxims and sermons but very bad in practical life.

A tool is but the extension of a man's hand, and a machine is but a complex tool. And he that invents a machine augments the power of a man and the well-being of mankind.

There is nothing that makes more cowards and feeble men than public opinion.

Are they dead that yet speak louder than we can speak, and a more universal language? Are they dead that yet act? Are they dead that yet move upon society and inspire the people with nobler motives and more heroic patriotism?

Men will let you abuse them if only you will make them laugh.

It usually takes a hundred years to make a law, and then, after it has done its work; it usually takes a hundred years to get rid of it.

Laws are not masters but servants, and he rules them who obey them.

A door that seems to stand open must be of a man's size, or it is not the door that providence means for him.

Nowhere else can one find so miscellaneous, so various, an amount of knowledge as is contained in a good newspaper.

Many men are stored full of unused knowledge. Like loaded guns that are never fired off, or military magazines in times of peace, they are stuffed with useless ammunition.

The imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith.

Rich men are to bear the infirmities of the poor. Wise men are to bear the mistakes of the ignorant. Strong men are to bear with the feeble. Cultured people are to bear with the rude and vulgar. If a rough and coarse man meets an ecstatically fine man, the man that is highest up is to be the servant of the man that is lowest down.

Education is the knowledge of how to use the whole of oneself. Many men use but one or two faculties out of the score with which they are endowed. A man is educated who knows how to make a tool of every faculty, how to open it, how to keep it sharp, and how to apply it to all practical purposes.

No man can tell another his faults so as to benefit him, unless he loves him.