438 Inspiring Quotes by Henry Ward Beecher

The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day.

Men are like trees: each one must put forth the leaf that is created in him.

Sorrow is Mount Sinai. If one will, one may go up and talk with God, face to face.

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.

Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they are going to catch you in next.

When a man can look upon the simple wild-rose, and feel no pleasure, his taste has been corrupted.

A man is a great bundle of tools. He is born into this life without the knowledge of how to use them. Education is the process of learning their use.

A traitor is good fruit to hang from the boughs of the tree of liberty.

Everyone has conscience enough to hate; few have religion enough to love.

There is no faculty of the human soul so persistent and universal as that of hatred.

Of all the music that reached farthest into heaven, it is the beating of a loving heart.

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

Some people are proud of their humility.

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence, but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

The disciples found angels at the grave of Him they loved; and we should always find them too, but that our eyes are too full of tears for seeing.

Love is not a possession but a growth. The heart is a lamp with just oil enough to burn for an hour, and if there be no oil to put in again its light will go out. God's grace is the oil that fills the lamp of love.

Heaven answers with us the same purpose that the tuning-fork does with musicians. Our affections, the whole orchestra of them, are apt to get below the concert-pitch; and we take heaven to tune our hearts by.

God uses suffering as a whetstone, to make men sharp with.

Memory can glean, but can never renew. It brings us joys faint as is the perfume of the flowers, faded and dried, of the summer that is gone.

Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page.

If there be any one whose power is in beauty, in purity, in goodness, it is a woman.

When men enter into the state of marriage, they stand nearest to God.

The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness. It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.

A library is but the soul's burying ground. It is a land of shadows.

If Christ is the wisdom of God and the power of God in the experience of those who trust and love Him, there needs no further argument of His divinity.

Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right use of strength.

There is no part of government which cannot better suffer derangement than the ballot. If you strike the ballot with disease, it is heart disease.

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?

Indifference in religion is more fatal than skepticism. There is no pulse in indifference; skepticism may have warm blood.

A babe is nothing but a bundle of possibilities.

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

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

When a man sells eleven ounces for twelve, he makes a compact with the devil, and sells himself for the value of an ounce.

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.

Customs represent the experience of mankind.

There is tonic in the things that men do not love to hear. Free speech is to a great people what the winds are to oceans ... and where free speech is stopped miasma is bred, and death comes fast.

Love is God's loaf; and this is that feeding for which we are taught to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread.

We go to the grave of a friend saying, "A man is dead,"
but angels throng about him saying, "A man is born.

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.

There is no slave out of heaven like a loving woman; and of all loving women, there is no such slave as a mother.

Many yet are the secret truths of God which will be unfolded as they are needed.

Everything that happens in this world is a part of a great plan of God running through all time.

Pride slays thanksgiving ... A prideful man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.

The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world's joy.

Home should be the center of joy, equatorial and tropical.

Nature is a vast repository of manly enjoyments.

We sleep, but the loom of life never stops, and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up in the morning.

We not only live among men, but there are airy hosts, blessed spectators, sympathetic lookers-on, that see and know and appreciate our thoughts and feelings and acts.

Evil men of every degree will use you, flatter you, lead you on until you are useless; then, if the virtuous do not pity you, or God compassionate, you are without a friend in the universe.

The blossom cannot tell what becomes of its odor, and no person can tell what becomes of his or her influence and example.

Every fresh act of benevolence is the herald of deeper satisfaction; every charitable act a stepping-stone towards heaven.

Going out into life -- that is dying. Christ is the door out of life.

Flowers ... have a mysterious and subtle influence upon the feelings, not unlike some strains of music. They relax the tenseness of the mind. They dissolve its rigor.

Death is not an end. It is a new impulse.

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

God makes the life fertile by disappointments, as he makes the ground fertile by frosts.

A thoughtful mind, when it sees a Nation's flag, sees not the flag only, but the Nation itself.

Maple-trees are the cows of trees (spring-milked).

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

Men must read for amusement as well as for knowledge.

When flowers are full of heaven-descended dews, they always hang their heads; but men hold theirs the higher the more they receive, getting proud as they get full.

Many men build as cathedrals are built-the part nearest the ground finished, but that part which soars toward heaven, the turrets and the spires, forever incomplete.

Good-humor makes all things tolerable.

A man who does not know how to be angry, does not know how to be good. Now and then a man should be shaken to the core with indignation over things evil.

Genius unexerted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.

There ought to be such an atmosphere in every Christian church that a man going there and sitting two hours should take the contagion of heaven, and carry home a fire to kindle the altar whence he came.

Victories that come cheap are cheap. Those only are worth having which come as the result of hard fighting.

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

I think you might dispense with half your doctors if you would only consult Dr. Sun more.

Joy is more divine than sorrow; for joy is bread, and sorrow is medicine.

If every child might live the life predestined in a mother's heart, all the way from the cradle to the coffin, he would walk upon a beam of light, and shine in glory.

Nothing can be further apart than true humility and servility.

Mirth is God's medicine.

God appoints our graces to be nurses to other men's weaknesses.

Fear is the soul's signal for rallying.

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.

I have known many an instance of a man writing a letter and forgetting to sign his name, but this is the only instance I have ever known of a man signing his name and forgetting to write the letter.

Mountains of gold would not seduce some men, yet flattery would break them down.

Men who neglect Christ, and try to win heaven through moralities, are like sailors at sea in a storm, who pull, some at the bowsprit and some at the mainmast, but never touch the helm.

The call to religion is not a call to be better than your fellows, but to be better than yourself. Religion is relative to the individual.

Fear secretes acids; but love and trust are sweet juices.

Religion is the fruit of the Spirit, a Christian character, a true life.

Cant is the twin sister of hypocrisy.

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

Titles are too "thin" for the nineteenth century.

We need not fear shipwreck when God is the pilot.

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

A mother is as different from anything else that God ever thought of, as can possibly be. She is a distinct and individual creation.

They hover as a cloud of witnesses above this Nation.

God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offense into everlasting forgiveness.

A practical, matter-of-fact man is like a wagon without springs: every single pebble on the road jolts him; but a man with imagination has springs that break the jar and jolt.

To become an able and successful man in any profession, three things are necessary, nature, study and practice.

There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.

Men judge of Christians by taking as fair samples those that lie rotten on the ground.

Many a man has been dined out of his religion, and his politics, and his manhood, almost.

You are not called to be a canary in a cage. You are called to be an eagle, and to fly sun to sun, over continents.

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.

The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.

The religion of Jesus Christ is not ascetic, nor sour, nor gloomy, nor circumscribing. It is full of sweetness in the present and in promise.

Laws and institutions, like clocks, must occasionally be cleaned, wound up, and set to true time.

October is the opal month of the year. It is the month of glory, of ripeness. It is the picture-month.

The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't.

There was never a person who did anything worth doing that he did not receive more than he gave.

The indolent mind is not empty, but full of vermin.

Mirth is the sweet wine of human life. It should be offered sparkling with zestful life unto God.

There is nothing which vanity does not desecrate.

The church is no more religion than the masonry of the aqueduct is the water that flows through it.

Every charitable act is a stepping stone toward heaven.

Refinement that carries us away from our fellow-men is not God's refinement.

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

Only have enough of little virtues and common fidelities, and you need not mourn because you are neither a hero nor a saint.

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

Do not be afraid of defeat. You are never so near victory as when you are defeated in a good cause.

All words are pegs to hang ideas on.

God's grace is the oil that fills the lamp of love.

Give us that calm certainty of truth, that nearness to Thee, that conviction of the reality of the life to come, which we shall need to bear us through the troubles of this.

Not that which men do worthily, but that which they do successfully, is what history makes haste to record.

There are many troubles which you cannot cure by the Bible and the hymn-book, but which you can cure by a good perspiration and a breath of fresh air.

A man ought to carry himself in the world as an orange tree would if it could walk up and down in the garden, swinging perfume from every little censer it holds up in the air.

There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them -- the senses, intelligent companions, and books.

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

As flowers always wear their own colors and give forth their own fragrance every day alike, so should Christians maintain their character at all times and under all circumstances.

A lie always needs a truth for a handle to it.

Death is the dropping of the flower, that the fruit may, swell.

So we fall asleep in Jesus. We have played long enough at the games of life, and at last we feel the approach of death. We are tired out, and we lay our heads back on the bosom of Christ, and quietly fall asleep.

Our life is in the loom; it rolls up and is hidden as fast as it is woven. It is to be taken out of the loom only when we leave this world; then only shall we see the pattern.

I don't like these cold, precise, perfect people, who, in order not to speak wrong, never speak at all, and in order not to do wrong, never do anything.

Coming to the Bible through commentaries is much like looking at a landscape through garret windows, over which generations of unmolested spiders have spun their webs.

A man that puts himself on the ground of moral principle, if the whole world be against him, is mightier than all of them.

All work and no plagiarism makes for dull sermons!

Law represents the effort of man to organize society; governments, the efforts of selfishness to overthrow liberty.

Laugh at your friends, and if your friends are sore; So much the better, you may laugh the more.

All the sobriety which' religion needs or requires is that which real earnestness produces.

Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without himself.

A coat that is not used, the moths eat; and a Christian who is hung up so that he shall not be tempted-the moths eat him; and they have poor food at that.

If Christ is not divine, every impulse of the Christian world falls to a lower octave, and light and love and hope decline.

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.

A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never.

Adversity is the mint in which God stamps upon man his image and superscription.

Love is the river of life in the world.

If you have only two or three things that you can enjoy and they are things which time and decay may remove from you, what are you going to do in old age?

Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.

If there's a job to be done, I always ask the busiest man in my parish to take it on and it gets done.

We never know the love of the parent for the child till we become parents.

It takes a man to make a devil; and the fittest man for such a purpose is a snarling, waspish, red-hot, fiery creditor.

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.

When the old creeds are threadbare, and worn through, And all too narrow for the broadening soul, Give me the fine, firm texture of the new, Fair, beautiful and whole!

Love is the wine of existence. When you have taken that, you have taken the most precious drop that there is in the cluster.

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.

No matter who reigns, the merchant reigns.

The world is God's workshop for making men in.

Your greatest pleasure is that which rebounds from hearts that you have made glad.

People may talk about the equality of the sexes! They are not equal. The silent smile of a sensible, loving woman will vanquish ten men.

The body is like a piano, and happiness is like music. It is needful to have the instrument in good order.

The tidal wave of God's providence is carrying liberty throughout the globe.

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

Every man should keep a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends.

He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.

The fear of doing right is the grand treason in times of danger.

Rain, whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains.

Interest works night and day in fair weather and in foul. It gnaws at a man's substance with invisible teeth.

Repentance is another name for aspiration.

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.

It is not in the nature of true greatness to be exclusive and arrogant.

A man should fear when he only enjoys what good he does publicly. Is it not the publicity rather than the charity he loves? Is it not vanity, rather than benevolence, that gives such charities?

Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven.

Vigilance is not only the price of liberty, but of success of any sort.

Involved sentences, crooked, circuitous, and parenthetical, no matter how musically they may be balanced, are prejudicial to a facile understanding of the truth.

Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.

There is always work, and tools to work withal, for those, who will.

No church can be prospered in which all the ministration comes from the pulpit.

Books are the true metempsychosis, -- they are the symbol and presage of immortality. The dead men are scattered, and none shall find them. Behold they are here! they do but sleep.

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

All men are tempted. There is no man that lives that can't be broken down, provided it is the right temptation, put in the right spot.

There is an army of waiters in this world.

The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to the light, always pursuing vermin and never hunting noble game.

No man is good for anything who has not some particle of obstinacy to use upon occasion.

Nothing is orderly till man takes hold of it. Everything in creation lies around loose.

Good nature is often a mere matter of health.

Precise knowledge is the only true knowledge, and he who does not teach exactly, does not teach at all.

John Wesley quaintly observed that the road to heaven is a narrow path, not intended for wheels, and that to ride in a coach here and to go to heaven hereafter, was a happiness too much for man.

The Bible stands alone in human literature in its elevated conception of manhood, in character and conduct.

Someone calls biography the home aspect of history.

There is not a heart but has its moments of longing, yearning for something better; nobler; holier than it knows now.

Nothing can compare in beauty, and wonder, and admirableness, and divinity itself, to the silent work in obscure dwellings of faithful women bringing their children to honor and virtue and piety.

There are some men's souls that are so thin, so almost destitute of what is the true idea of soul, that were not the guardian angels so keen-sighted, they would altogether overlook them.

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.

Beauty may be said to be God's trademark in creation.

The mere wit is only a human bauble. He is to life what bells are to horses-not expected to draw the load, but only to jingle while the horses draw.

Be a hard master to yourself -- and be lenient to everybody else.

Reading is a dissuasion from immorality. Reading stands in the place of company.

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.

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

Watch lest prosperity destroy generosity.

There is nothing that is so wonderfully created as the human soul. There is something of God in it. We are infinite in the future, though we are finite in the past.

Do not be afraid because the, community teems with excitement. Silence and death are dreadful. The rush of life, the vigor of earnest men, the conflict of realities, invigorate, cleanse, and establish the truth.

Good nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor, to the persons who possess it.

If you are idle, you are on the road to ruin; and there are few stopping-places upon it. It is rather a precipice than a road.

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

Some sorrows are but footprints in the snow, which the genial sun effaces, or, if it does not wholly efface, changes into dimples.

If a man cannot be a Christian in the place he is, he cannot be a Christian anywhere.

A law is valuable not because it is law, but because there is right in it.

Clothes and manners do not make the man; but, when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance.

He who hunts for flowers will finds flowers; and he who loves weeds will find weeds.

Some folks think that Christianity means a kind of insurance policy, and that it has little to do with this life, but that it is a very good thing when a man dies.

The newspaper is a greater treasure to the people than uncounted millions of gold.

The humblest individual exerts some influence, either for good or evil, upon others.

Now comes the mystery.

There is an equator that runs just under the nose: all that live below the equator are animals; all that live above it are men.

Blessed are they who know how to shine on one's gloom with their cheer.

If men had wings and bore black feathers, Few of them would be clever enough to be crows.

God planted fear in the soul as truly as he planted hope or courage. Pear is a kind of bell, or gong, which rings the mind into quick life and avoidance upon the approach of danger. It is the soul's signal for rallying.

When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.

This world is magnificent for strangers and pilgrims, but miserable for residents.

You and I do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.

Selfishness at the expense of others happiness is demonism.

The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.

Some of God's noblest sons, I think, will be selected from those that know how to take wealth, with all its temptations, and maintain godliness therewith. It is hard to be a saint standing in a golden niche.

Nothing can be more airy and beautiful than the transparent seed-globe-a fairy dome of splendid architecture.

Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into.

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.

Our earthly loves are but so many silver steps leading us up to the great golden love of God.

May we be satisfied with nothing that shall not have in it something of immortality.

Why is not a rat as good as a rabbit? Why should men eat shrimps and neglect cockroaches?

Genius is a steed too fiery for the plow or the cart.

Ignorance is the womb of monsters.

I can forgive, but I cannot forget," is only another way of saying, "I will not forgive."

Newspapers are to the body politic what arteries are to the human body, their function being to carry blood and sustenance and repair to every part of the body.

Work is not a curse, but drudgery is.

It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Worry is rust upon the blade.

Gratitude is the fairest blossom that springs from the soul.

It takes longer for man to find out man than any other creature that is made.

That was a judicious mother who said, "I obey my children for the first year of their lives, but ever after I expect them to obey me.

There are persons so radiant, so genial, so kind, so pleasure-bearin g, that you instinctively feel in their presence that they do you good; whose coming into a room is like bringing a lamp there.

An oyster, that marvel of delicacy, that concentration of sapid excellence, that mouthful bwefore all other mouthfuls, who first had faith to believe it, and courage to execute? The exterior is not persuasive.

The soul is a temple; and God is silently building it by night and by day. Precious thoughts are building it; disinterested love is building it; all-penetrating faith is building it.

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

Too much looking backward ... is bad for progress.

Well married, a man is winged--ill-matched, he is shackled.

He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.

Like waves, our feelings may continue by repeating themselves, by intermittent rushes; but no emotion any more than a wave can long retain its own individual form.

Mirthfulness is in the mind and you cannot get it out. It is just as good in its place as conscience or veneration.

There is a patience that cackles. There are a great many virtues that are hen-like. They are virtue, to be sure; but everybody in the neighborhood has to know about them.

Temptations are enemies outside the castle seeking entrance. If there be no false retainer within who holds treacherous parley, there can scarcely be even an offer.

You cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are indispensable to the rich.

We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.

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.

It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.

Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient.

A man's religion is himself. If he is right-minded toward God, he is religious; if the Lord Jesus Christ is his schoolmaster, then he is Christianly religious.

A book is a garden; A book is an orchard; A book is a storehouse; A book is a party. It is company by the way; it is a counselor; it is a multitude of counselors.

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself, and a mean man, by one lower than himself.

Next to the pastoral came the agricultural life. When you add to that the manufacturing phase of development, society begins to fill out, and needs but wings to fly, and commerce is its wings.

The great lever by which to raise and save the world is the unbounded love and mercy of God.

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

A conservative young man has wound up his life before it was unreeled. We expect old men to be conservative but when a nation's young men are so, its funeral bell is already rung.

The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom.

Suffering is part of the divine idea.

Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.

‎Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself-and be lenient to everybody else.

When our children die, we drop them into the unknown, shuddering with fear. We know that they go out from us, and we stand, and pity, and wonder.

The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.

Defeat is a school in which truth always grows strong.

God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You must take it. The only choice is how.

That is the best baptism that leaves the man cleanest inside.

Whoever makes home seem to the young dearer and more happy, is a public benefactor.

A dull ax never loves grindstones.

We only see in a lifetime a dozen faces marked with the peace of a contented spirit.

A grindstone that had not grit in it, how long would it take to sharpen an ax? And affairs that had not grit in them, how long would they take to make a man?

Never forget what a man says to you when he is angry.

A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good.

Nothing goes far which has not the wings of love to make it buoyant, so that it can fly.

God bless the good-natured, for they bless everybody else.

I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.

What a mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin.

Christians should be like a flower store: the odor of sanctity should betray them wherever they are.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

Morality is character and conduct such as is required by the circle or community in which the man's life happens to be placed. It shows how much good men require of us.

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

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!

He is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.

It is one of the worst effects of prosperity to make a man a vortex instead of a fountain; so that, instead of throwing out, he learns only to draw in.

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

Words are pegs to hang ideas on.

One's best success comes after their greatest disappointments.

It is not what we read, but what we remember, that makes us learned. It is not what we intend, but what we do that makes us useful. It is not a few faint wishes, but a life long struggle, that makes us valiant.

Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.

A helping word to one in trouble is often like a switch on a railroad track-an inch between wreck and smooth-rolling prosperity.

God plants no yearning in the human soul that he does not intend to satisfy.

Flowers are sent to do God's work in unrevealed paths, and to diffuse influence by channels that we hardly suspect.

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

The Bible is God's chart for you to steer by, to keep you from the bottom of the sea, and to show you where the harbor is, and how to reach it without running on rocks or bars.

One might as well attempt to calculate mathematically the contingent forms of the tinkling bits of glass in a kaleidoscope as to look through the tube of the future and foretell its pattern.

Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep-burning, unquenchable.

No one thing does human life more need than a kind consideration of the faults of others. Every one sins; everyone needs forbearance. Our own imperfections should teach us to be merciful.

Weak minds may be injured by novel-reading; but sensible people find both amusement and instruction therein.

There is no man that lives who does not need to be drilled, disciplined, and developed into something higher and nobler and better than he is by nature. Life is one prolonged birth.

Flowers may beckon towards us, but they speak toward heaven and God.

You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; but you must approach each man by the right door.

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.

Man is that name of power which rises above them all, and gives to every one the right to be that which God meant he should be.

There is not a single heart but has its moments of longing.

A mother has, perhaps, the hardest earthly lot; and yet no mother worthy of the name ever gave herself thoroughly for her child who did not feel that, after all, she reaped what she had sown.

The thistle is a prince. Let any man that has an eye for beauty take a view of the whole plant, and where will he see a more expressive grace and symmetry; and where is there a more kingly flower?

The advertisements in a newspaper are more full knowledge in respect to what is going on in a state or community than the editorial columns are.

A gamester, as such, is the cool, calculating, essential spirit of concentrated, avaricious selfishness.

No matter what looms ahead, if you can eat today, enjoy today, mix good cheer with friends today enjoy it and bless God for it.

Refinement is the lifting of one's self upwards from the merely sensual; the effort of the soul to etherealize the common wants and uses of life.

Morality must always precede and accompany religion, and yet religion is much more than morality.

The dog was created specially for children. He is the god of frolic.

If a man has come to that point where he is no content that he says; I do not want to know any more, or do any more or be any more, he is in a state in which he ought to be changed into a mummy.

Education will not come of itself; it will never come unless you seek it; it will not come unless you take the first steps which lead to it; but, taking these steps, every man can acquire it.

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.

We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's.

Truths are first clouds; then rain, then harvest and food.

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.

Any law that takes hold of a mans daily life cannot prevail in a community, unless the vast majority of the community are actively in favor of it. The laws that are the most operative are the laws which protect life.

It is a bitter thought to an avaricious spirit that by and by all these accumulations must be left behind. We can only carry away from this world the flavor of our good or evil deeds.

Wherever you have seen God pass, mark that spot, and go and sit in that window again.

Every man should use his intellect, not as he uses his lamp in the study, only for his own seeing, but as the lighthouse uses its lamps, that those afar off on the seas may see the shining, and learn their way.

They who refuse education to a black man would turn the South into a vast poorhouse, and labor into a pendulum, necessity vibrating between poverty and indolence.

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

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

The mischiefs of anarchy have been equaled by the mischiefs of government.

He is the happiest man who is engaged in a business which tasks the most faculties of his mind.

There never was a liar that had not a spot in him where he could not help admiring truth.

No emotion, any more than a wave, can long retain its own individual form.

Make men large and strong and tyranny will bankrupt itself in making shackles for them.

What is the disposition which makes men rejoice in good bargains? There are few people who will not be benefited by pondering over the morals of shopping.

People may excite in themselves a glow of compassion, not by toasting their feet at the fire, and saying: Lord, teach me compassion, but by going and seeking an object that requires compassion.

A man's true estate of power and riches is to be in himself; not in his dwelling or position or external relations, but in his own essential character.

Debt rolls a man over and over, binding him hand and foot, and letting him hang upon the fatal mesh until the long-legged interest devours him.

There is no such thing as preaching patience into people, unless the sermon is so long that they have to practise it while they hear.

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.

Success surely comes with conscience in the long run, other things being equal. Capacity and fidelity are commercially profitable qualities.

The one great poem of New England is her Sunday.

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.

The God of the Bible is a moral monstrosity.

The moment an ill can be patiently handled, it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain.

A church debt is the devil's salary.

A man without ambition is worse than dough that has no yeast in it to raise it.

Heaven will be inherited by every man who has heaven in his soul.

Love is the medicine of all moral evil. By it the world is to be cured of sin.

To array, a man's will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine.

Beware of him who hates the laugh of a child.

Sophistry is the fallacy of argument.

Find out what your temptations are, and you will find out largely what you are yourself.

Let the GRATEFUL HEART sweep through the day that it may recognize in every hour some sweet blessing.

The monkey is an organized Sarcasm upon the human race.

Every man carries a menagerie in himself; and, by stirring him up all around, you will find every sort of animal represented there.

Music cleanses the understanding;
inspires it, and lifts it into a realm
which it would not reach if it were left to itself.

You cannot play the hypocrite before God; and to obtain pardon you must cease to sin, as well as to be exercised by a spirit of repentance.

A man never has good luck who has a bad wife.

Expedients are for an hour, but principles are for the ages. Just because the rains descend and winds blow, we cannot afford to build on shifting sands.

God puts the excess of hope in one man, in order that it may be a medicine to the man who is despondent.

Pain is God's midwife, that helps some virtue into existence.

We may cover a multitude of sins with the white robe of charity.

When a man has no longer any conception of excellence above his own, his voyage is done, he is dead, -- dead in trespasses and sin of blear-eyed vanity.