Henry Ward Beecher Men Quotations

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

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

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

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

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

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

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

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

A man's true state of power and riches is to be in himself.

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.

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.

No man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions.

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

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

It is not well for a man to pray cream and live skim milk.

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

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

The overweening self-respect of conceited men relieves others from the duty of respecting them at all

When young men are beginning life, the most important period, it is often said, is that in which their habits are formed. That is a very important period. But the period in which the ideas of the young are formed and adopted is more important still.

. . . commerce dies the moment, and is sick in the degree in which men cannot trust each other.

Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men and animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and the hollyhock.

Do not give, as many rich men do, like a hen that lays her egg and then cackles

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.

The great men of earth are the shadow men, who, having lived and died, now live again and forever through their undying thoughts. Thus living, though their footfalls are heard no more, their voices are louder than the thunder, and unceasing as the flow of tides or air.

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.

You may say, "I wish to send this ball so as to kill the lion crouching yonder, ready to spring upon me. My wishes are all right, and I hope Providence will direct the ball." Providence won't. You must do it; and if you do not, you are a dead man.

No grace can save any man unless he helps himself.

True politeness is the spirit of benevolence showing itself in a refined way. It is the expression of good-will and kindness. It promotes both beauty in the man who possesses it, and happiness in those who are about him. It is a religious duty, and should be a part of religious training.

I think half the troubles for which men go slouching in prayer to God are caused by their intolerable pride. Many of our cares are but a morbid way of looking at our privileges. We let our blessings get mouldy, and then call them curses.

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.

God never made anything else so beautiful as man.

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.

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

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.

Perverted pride is a great misfortune in men; but pride in its original function, for which God created it, is indispensable to a proper manhood.

It takes a man to make a devil.

Men must read for amusement as well as for knowledge.

Nature holds an immense uncollected debt over every man's head.

Half the spiritual difficulties that men and women suffer arise from a morbid state of health.

Brethren, we are all sailing home; and by and by, when we are not thinking of it, some shadowy thing (men call it death), at midnight, will pass by, and will call us by name, and will say, "I have a message for you from home; God wants you; heaven waits for you.

Men do not avail themselves of the riches of God's grace. They love to nurse their cares, and seem as uneasy without some fret as an old friar would be without his hair girdle. They are commanded to cast their cares upon the Lord, but even when they attempt it, they do not fail to catch them up again, and think it meritorious to walk burdened.

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.

He that would look with contempt on the pursuits of the farmer, is not worthy the name of a man.

No man ever learned to love God with all his heart, and his neighbour as himself, in a day.

A lie is a very short wick in a very small lamp. The oil of reputation is very soon sucked up and gone. And just as soon as a man is known to lie, he is like a two-foot pump in a hundred-foot well. He cannot touch bottom at all.

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.

There are materials enough in every man's mind to make a hell there.

Miracles are like candles lit up until the sun rises, and then blown out. Therefore, I am amused when I hear sects and churches talk about having evidence of Divine authority because they have miracles. Miracles in our time are like candles in the street at midday. We do not want miracles. They are to teach men how to find out truths themselves; and after they have learned this, they no more need them than a well man needs a staff, or a grown-up child needs a walking-stool.

There is not on earth so base a knave as the man who wins the love of a woman when he knows that he cannot or ought not to requite it.

There is no right more universal and more sacred, because lying so near the root of existence, than the right of men to their own labor.

To the covetous man life is a nightmare, and God lets him wrestle with it as best he may.

Life is full of amusement to an amusing man.

Religion would save a man; Christ would make him worth saving.

The best lessons a man ever learns are from his mistakes. It is not for want of schoolmasters that we are still ignorant.

Money in the hands of one or two men is like a dungheap in a barnyard. So long as it lies in a mass, it does no good; but, if it is only spread out evenly on the land, everything will grow.

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

Religion is only another word for the right use of a man's whole self, instead of a wrong use of himself.

A man is a fool who sits looking backward from himself in the past. Ah, what shallow, vain conceit there is in man! Forget the things that are behind. That is not where you live. Your roots are not there. They are in the present; and you should reach up into the other life.

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.

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.

Every man is full of music; but it is not every man that knows how to bring it out.

It is the end of art to inoculate men with the love of nature.

Socially we are woven into the fabric of society, where every man is like one thread in a piece of cloth. No single thread has a right to say, "I will stay here no longer," and draw out. No man has a right to make a hole in the well-woven fabric of society.

A man has no more religion than he acts out in his life.

There is a great deal more correctness of thought respecting manhood in bodily things than in moral things. For men's ideas of manhood shape themselves as the tower and spire of cathedrals do, that stand broad at the bottom, but grow tapering as they rise, and end, far up, in the finest lines, and in an evanishing point. Where they touch the ground they are most, and where they reach to the heaven they are least.

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.

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

Now, men think, with regard to their conduct, that, if they were to lift themselves up gigantically and commit some crashing sin, they should never be able to hold up their heads; but they will harbor in their souls little sins, which are piercing and eating them away to inevitable ruin.

It is often said it is no matter what a man believes if he is only sincere. This is true of all minor truths, and false of all truths whose nature it is to fashion a man's life. It will make no difference in a man's harvest whether he thinks turnips have more saccharine matter than potatoes--whether corn is better than wheat. But let the man sincerely believe that seed planted without ploughing is as good as with, that January is as favorable for seed sowing as April, and that cockle seed will produce as good a harvest as wheat, and will it make no difference?

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.

There is an ugly kind of forgiveness in this world,--a kind of hedgehog forgiveness, shot out like quills. Men take one who has offended, and set him down before the blowpipe of their indignation, and scorch him, and burn his fault into him; and when they have kneaded him sufficiently with their fiery fists, then--they forgive him.

A man in the right, with God on his side, is in the majority, though he be alone, for God is multitudinous above all populations of the earth.

Many men want wealth,--not a competence alone, but a live-story competence. Everything subserves this; and religion they would like as a sort of lightning-rod to their houses, to ward off by and by the bolts of Divine wrath.

Men of dissolute lives have little incentive to look forward to the hopes and glories of immortality. A due conception of these would be incompatible with such a life.

Think of a man in a chronic state of anger!

While a man is stringing a harp, he tries the strings, not for music, but for construction. When it is finished it shall be played for melodies. God is fashioning the human heart for future joy. He only sounds a string here and there to see how far His work has progressed.

I beseech you to correct one fault - severe speech of others; never speak evil of any man, no matter what the facts may be.

That which distinguishes man from the brute is his power, in dealing with Nature, to milk her laws, and make them give forth their bounty.

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

There's not much practical Christianity in the man who lives on better terms with angels and seraphs than with his children, servants and neighbours.

The deeper men go into life, the deeper is their conviction that this life is not all. It is an unfinished symphony. A day may round out an insect's life, and a bird or a beast needs no tomorrow. Not so with him who knows that he is related to God and has felt the power of an endless life.

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

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.

When young men or women are beginning life, the most important period, it is often said, is that in which their habits are formed. That is a very important period. But the period in which the ideals of the young are formed and adopted is more important still. For the ideal with which you go forward to measure things determines the nature, so far as you are concerned, of everything you meet.

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

Before men we stand as opaque bee-hives. They can see the thoughts go in and out of us; but what work they do inside of a man they cannot tell. Before God we are as glass bee-hives, and all that our thoughts are doing within us he perfectly sees and understands.

You can imagine thistle-down so light that when you run after it your running motion would drive it away from you, and that the more you tried to catch it the faster it would fly from your grasp. And it should be with every man, that, when he is chased by troubles, they, chasing, shall raise him higher and higher.

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.

Though a man declares himself an atheist, it in no way alters his obligations.

As ships meet at sea a moment together, when words of greeting must be spoken, and then away upon the deep, so men meet in this world; and I think we should cross no man's path without hailing him, and if he needs giving him supplies.

God's men are better than the devil's men, and they ought to act as though they thought they were.

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.

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

I have known men who thought the object of conversion was to cleanse them as a garment is cleansed, and that when they are converted they were to be hung up in the Lord's wardrobe, the door of which was to be shut, so that no dust could get at them. 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.

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.

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.

Many will say, "I can find God without the help of the Bible, or church, or minister." Very well. Do so if you can. The Ferry Company would feel no jealousy of a man who should prefer to swim to New York. Let him do so if he is able, and we will talk about it on the other shore; but probably trying to swim would be the thing that would bring him quickest to the boat. So God would have no jealousy of a man's going to heaven without the aid of the Bible, or church, or minister; but let him try to do so, and it will be the surest way to bring him back to them for assistance.

The word of God tends to make large-minded noble-minded men.

Ordinarily rivers run small at the beginning, grow broader and broader as they proceed, and become widest and deepest at the point, where they enter the sea. It is such rivers that the Christian's life is like. But the life of the mere worldly man is like those rivers in Southern Africa, which, proceeding from mountain freshets, are broad and deep at the beginning, and grow narrower and more shallow as they advance. They waster themselves by soaking into the sands, and at last they die out entirely. The farther they run the less there is of them.

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.