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.
Henry Ward BeecherRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the choice between approaching the future with anxiety or faith.
Henry Ward Beecher's quote reflects on the duality of how we can perceive and approach the future. It suggests that while tomorrow brings uncertainty, we have the power to choose our mindset: we can either grip it with anxiety, which can paralyze and hinder our present, or with faith, which allows us to embrace possibilities. Furthermore, Beecher encourages us to remain grounded in the present, as our present actions and attitudes shape our future experiences.
Themes
FutureFaithAnxietyPresentChoice
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about overcoming challenges.
More from Henry Ward Beecher
All quotes →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.
Henry Ward BeecherRead
No one can deal with the hearts of men unless he has the sympathy which is given by love.
Henry Ward BeecherRead
We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.
Henry Ward BeecherRead
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.
Henry Ward BeecherRead
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.
Henry Ward BeecherRead
Similar quotes
This thing is but a puny imitation of a much grander system whose laws you know, and I am not able to convince you that this mere toy is without a designer or maker; yet you profess to believe that the great original from which the design is taken has come into being without either designer or maker! Now tell me by what sort of reasoning do you reach such an incongruous conclusion?
Isaac NewtonRead
In order to increase his pleasures, man has intentionally added to the number and pressure of his needs, which in their original state were not much more difficult to satisfy than those of the brute. Hence luxury in all its forms; delicate food, the use of tobacco and opium, spirituous liquors, fine clothes, and the thousand and one things that he considers necessary to his existence.
Arthur SchopenhauerRead
Our technological society has no longer any place in it for wisdom that seeks truth for its own sake, that seeks the fullness of being, that seeks to rest in an intuition of the very ground of all being. Without wisdom, the apparent opposition of action and contemplation, of work and rest, of involvement and detachment, can never be resolved.
Thomas MertonRead
Your source material is the people you know, not those you don't know, but every character is an extension of the author's own personality.
Edward AlbeeRead
That world is ended, as if it had never been. Let the race of Adam and Eve take warning.
C. S. LewisRead
National pride is to countries what self-respect is to individuals: a necessary condition for self-improvement.
Richard RortyRead