WIST

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anyone else expects of you.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
(Attributed)

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

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
(Attributed)

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

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
(Attributed)

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

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
(Attributed)

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.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
(Attributed)
In Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

Success is full of promise till men get it; and then it is last year’s nest from which the bird has flown.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
(Attributed)
In Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

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

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
(Attributed)

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. The cynic puts all human actions into two classes — openly bad and secretly bad.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
Lectures to Young Men: On Various Important Subjects, Lecture 4 “Portrait Gallery” (1860

Happiness is not the end of life, character is.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
Life Thoughts (1858)

Doctrine is nothing but the skin of truth set up and stuffed.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
Life Thoughts (1858)

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

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
Life Thoughts (1858)

It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend of his faults. … To speak painful truth through loving words — that is friendship.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
Life Thoughts [rec. Proctor (1858)]

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.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
Notes from Plymouth Pulpit (1859)

The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes. Ignorance is the womb of monsters.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit (1859)

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.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit (1887)

Riches are not an end of life, but an instrument of life.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit (1887)

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

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit (1887)

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.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, “The Human Mind” [ed. William Drysdale (1887)]

Full text.

Frequently rendered, but unsourced in this form: "A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road."

In Royal Truths (1866) [comp.]: "A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs, in which one is caused disagreeablly to jolt by every pebble over which it runs. A man with mirth is like a chariot with springs, in which one can ride over the roughest road, and scarcely feel anything but a pleasant rocking motion."

Mirth is God’s medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety — all this rust of life ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. It is better than emery. Every man ought to rub himself with it.

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
Royal Truths (1866)

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
Star Papers; or Experiences of Art and Nature (1855)