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.

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

It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hard put more upon a man than he can bear. Worry is rust upon the blade. It is not the revolution that destroys the machinery, but the friction.

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

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 light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game.

Let every man come to God in his own way.

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.

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

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

If anyone, then, asks me the meaning of our flag, I say to him - it means just what Concord and Lexington meant; what Bunker Hill meant; which was, in short, the rising up of a valiant young people against an old tyranny to establish the most momentous doctrine that the world had ever known - the right of men to their own selves and to their liberties.

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.

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.

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

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

Sink the Bible to the bottom of the ocean, and still man's obligations to God would be unchanged. He would have the same path to tread, only his lamp and guide would be gone; the same voyage to make, but his chart and compass would be overboard!

The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts, and would devour one another but for this protection.

No man is more cheated than the selfish man.

If any man is rich and powerful he comes under the law of God by which the higher branches must take the burnings of the sun, and shade those that are lower; by which the tall trees must protect the weak plants beneath them.

A man without self-restraint is like a barrel without hoops, and tumbles to pieces.

As the cream abandons the milk from which it took its life, and rises to the top and rides there, so men, because they are richer than those around about them, separate themselves, and all mankind below them they regard as skim milk.

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.

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.

In the early ages men ruled by strength; now they rule by brain, and so long as there is only one man in the world who can think and plan, he will stand head and shoulders above him who cannot.

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

All the wide world is but the husbandry of God for the development of the one fruit-man.

Some men think that the globe is a sponge that God puts into their hands to squeeze for their own garden or flower-pot.

Were one to ask me in which direction I think man strongest, I should say, his capacity to hate.

That state of mind in which a man is impressed with invisible things is faith.

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

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.

We know that the gifts which men have do not come from the schools. If a man is a plain, literal, factual man, you can make a great deal more of him in his own line by education than without education, just as you can make a great deal more of a potato if you cultivate it than if you do not; but no cultivation in this world will ever make an apple out of a potato.

Men will imitate and admire his unmoved firmness, his inflexible conscience for the right; and yet his gentleness, as tender as a woman's, his moderation of spirit, which not all the heat of party could inflame, nor all the jars and disturbances of this country shake out of its place: I swear you to an emulation of his justice, his moderation, and his mercy.

Blessed be the man whose work drives him. Something must drive men; and if it is wholesome industry, they have no time for a thousand torments and temptations.

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

Many men are mere warehouses full of merchandise--the head, the heart, are stuffed with goods. . . . There are apartments in their souls which were once tenanted by taste, and love, and joy, and worship, but they are all deserted now, and the rooms are filled with earthy and material things.

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.

To do good work a man should no doubt be industrious. To do great work he must certainly be idle a well.

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.

If a man can have only one kind of sense, let him have common sense. If he has that and uncommon sense too, he is not far from genius.

No cradle for an emperor's child was ever prepared with so much magnificence as this world has been made for man. But it is only his cradle.

Our life is but a new form of the way men have lived from the beginning.

God has made sleep to be a sponge by which to rub out fatigue. A man's roots are planted in night as in a soil.

Men think God is destroying them because he is tuning them. The violinist screws up the key till the tense cord sounds the concert pitch; but it is not to break it, but to use it tunefully, that he stretches the string upon the musical rack.

The poor man with industry is happier than the rich man in idleness.

Life would be a perpetual flea hunt if a man were obliged to run down all the innuendoes, inveracities, and insinuations and misrepresentations which are uttered against him.

The most miserable pettifogging in the world is that of a man in the court of his own consciences.

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.

Some men are like pyramids, which are very broad where they touch the ground, but grow narrow as they reach the sky.

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

A man without ambition is like a beautiful worm - it can creep, but it cannot fly.

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

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

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.

If a man harbors any sort of fear, it percolates through all his thinking, damages his personality, makes him landlord to a ghost.

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

It is not merely cruelty that leads men to love war, it is excitement.

Some men are, in regard to ridicule, like tin-roofed buildings in regard to hail: all that hits them bounds rattling off; not a stone goes through.

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

It is defeat that turns bone to flint; it is defeat that turns gristle to muscle; it is defeat that makes men invincible. Do not then be afraid of defeat. You are never so near to victory as when defeated in a good cause.

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

Caution and conservatism are expected of old age; but when the young men of a nation are possessed of such a spirit, when they are afraid of the noise and strife caused by the applications of the truth, heaven save the land! Its funeral bell has already rung.

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.

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

Ambition is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

Rich men are to bear the infirmities of the poor, and wise are to bear the mistakes of the ignorant.

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?

Men strengthen each other in their faults. Those who are alike associate together, repeat the things which all believe, defend and stimulate their common faults of disposition, and each one receives from the others a reflection of his own egotism.

There are many persons of combative tendencies, who read for ammunition, and dig out of the Bible iron for balls. They read, and they find nitre and charcoal and sulphur for powder. They read, and they find cannon. They read, and they make portholes and embrasures. And if a man does not believe as they do, they look upon him as an enemy, and let fly the Bible at him to demolish him. So men turn the word of God into a vast arsenal, filled with all manner of weapons, offensive and defensive.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

A man that does not love praise is not a full man.

Very few men acquire wealth in such a manner as to receive pleasure from it.

The morbid states of health, the irritableness of disposition arising from unstrung nerves, the impatience, the crossness, the fault-finding of men, who, full of morbid influences, are unhappy themselves, and throw the cloud of their troubles like a dark shadow upon others, teach us what eminent duty there is in health.

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.

Sorrow makes men sincere.