Henry Ward Beecher

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


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

A church debt is the devil's salary.

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.

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

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

A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.

All ambitions are lawful except those that climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.

Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.

Beware of him who hates the laugh of a child.

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.

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.

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

Every charitable act is a stepping stone toward heaven.

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

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