Henry Ward Beecher War Quotations

The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.

Success is full of promise till one gets it, and then it seems like a nest from which the bird has flown.

Never forget what a person says to you when they are angry.

The babe at first feeds upon the mother's bosom, but it is always on her heart.

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

Well married a person has wings, poorly married shackles.

In this world, full often, our joys are only the tender shadows which our sorrows cast.

God made man to go by motives, and he will not go without them, any more than a boat without steam or a balloon without gas.

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

A Christian is nothing but a sinful man who has put himself to school for Christ for the honest purpose of becoming better.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Gambling with cards or dice or stocks is all one thing. It's getting money without giving an equivalent for it.

Next to ingratitude the most painful thing to bear is gratitude.

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

Theology is a science of mind applied to God.

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

Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages.

To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself.

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

The dog is the god of frolic.

A man's character is the reality of himself; his reputation, the opinion others have formed about him; character resides in him, reputation in other people; that is the substance, this is the shadow.

Nothing dies so hard, or rallies so often as intolerance.

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

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

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

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

Oftentimes great and open temptations are the most harmless because they come with banners flying and bands playing and all the munitions of war in full view, so that we know we are in the midst of enemies that mean us damage, and we get ready to meet and resist them. Our peculiar dangers are those that surprise us and work treachery in our fort.

As long as society is absolutely divided as milk is, the cream being at the top and the impoverished milk at the bottom, so long will society be unbalanced, and liable to be thrown into convulsions out of which will spring wars. A circulation throughout keeps it in health.

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

The most dangerous people are the ignorant.

The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.

Our flag means all that our fathers meant in the Revolutionary War. It means all that the Declaration of Independence meant. It means justice. It means liberty. It means happiness.... Every color means liberty. Every thread means liberty. Every star and stripe means liberty.

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.

The one great poem of New England is her Sunday.

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

Theology is but our ideas of truth classified and arranged.

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

It was the German schoolhouse which destroyed Napoleon III. France, since then, is making monster cannon and drilling soldiers still, but she is also building schoolhouses. As long as war is possible, anything that makes better soldiers people want.

Most of the debts of Europe represent condensed drops of blood.

Thorough selfishness destroys or paralyzes enjoyment. A heart made selfish by the contest for wealth is like a citadel stormed in war, utterly shattered.