Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Henry Ward Beecher

American Clergyman, Editor, Writer

"The purest pleasures lie within the circle of useful occupation. Mere pleasure, sought outside of usefulness, is fraught with poison."

"The mystery of history is an insoluble problem."

"There can be no high civilization where there is not ample leisure."

"The strength and the happiness of a man consists in finding out the way in which God is going, and going in that way, too."

"The purest pleasures lie within the circle of useful occupation. Mere pleasure, sought outside of usefulness, is fraught with poison."

"There never was a person who did anything worth doing that did not receive more than he gave."

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

"There is no liberty to men whose passions are stronger than their religious feelings; there is no liberty to men in whom ignorance predominates over knowledge; there is no liberty to men who know not how to govern themselves."

"Thinking cannot be clear till it has had expression. We must write, or speak, or act our thoughts, or they will remain in a half torpid form. Our feelings must have expression, or they will be as clouds, which, till they descend in rain, will never bring up fruit or flower. So it is with all the inward feelings; expression gives them development. Thought is the blossom; language the opening bud; action the fruit behind it."

"To spend several days in a friend's house and hunger for something to read, while you are treading on costly carpets, and sitting upon luxurious chairs and sleeping upon down, is as if one were bribing your body for the sake of cheating your mind."

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

"Very few men acquire wealth in such a manner as to receive pleasure from it. As long as there is the enthusiasm of the chase they enjoy it. But when they begin to look around and think of settling down, they find that that part by which joy enters in, is dead in them. They have spent their lives in heaping up colossal piles of treasure, which stand at the end, like the pyramids in the desert, holding only the dust of things."

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

"We never know the love of our parents for us till we have become parents."

"We should so live and labor in our time that what came to us as seed may; go to the next generation as blossom, and what came to us as blossom may go to them as fruit. This is what is meant by progress."

"Watch lest prosperity destroy generosity."

"What the mother sings to the cradle goes all the way to the coffin."

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

"What we call wisdom is the result of all the wisdom of past ages. Our best institutions are like young trees growing upon the roots of the old trunks that have crumbled away."

"We sleep, but the loom of life never stops, and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up in the morning."

"What would the nightingale care if the toad despised her singing? She would still sing on, and leave the cold toad to his dark shadows. And what care I for the sneers of men who grovel upon earth? I will still sing on in the ear and bosom of God."

"Whatever is only almost true is quite false; and among the most dangerous of errors, because being so near truth, it is the more likely to lead astray. Precise knowledge is the only true knowledge, and he who does not teach exactly, does not teach at all."

"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."

"When we borrow trouble, and look forward into the future and see what storms are coming, and distress ourselves before they come, as to how we shall avert them if they ever do come, we lose our proper trustfulness in God. When we torment ourselves with imaginary dangers, or trials, or reverses we have already parted with that perfect love with casteth our fear."

"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. For the ideal with which you go forth to measure things determines the nature, so far as you are concerned, of everything you meet."

"When a men sells eleven ounces for twelve, he makes a compact with the devil, and sells himself for the value of the ounce."

"Whenever education and refinement grow away from the common people, they are growing toward selfishness, which is the monster evil of the world. that is true cultivation which gives us sympathy with every form of human life, and enables us to work most successfully for its advancement. Refinement that carries us away from our fellow-men is not God's refinement."

"Work is not the curse, but drudgery is."

"Why should men work? Because their hearts want some outlet to give expression to the feeling of earnest sympathy that is in them. Where a man has a strong and large benevolence, he will always be busy, and pleasantly busy."

"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."

"You cannot teach a child to take care of himself unless you will let him try to take care of himself. He will make mistakes; and out of these mistakes will come his wisdom."

""I can forgive but I cannot forget" is only another way of saying "I will not forgive." Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note - torn in two and burned up so that it can never be shown against one."

"God never ordained you to have a conscience for others. Your conscience is for you, and for you alone."

"Conscience is the frame of character."

"Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you, never excuse yourself."

"A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs; jolted by every pebble in the road."

"It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship."

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

"It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage."

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

"One’s best success comes after their greatest disappointments."

"The world's battlefields are in the heart."

"Defeat is a school in which Truth always grows strong."

"“I can forgive, but I cannot forget,” is only another way of saying, “I will not forgive.” A forgiveness ought to be like a canceled note, torn in two and burned up, so that it can never be shown against the man."

"In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich."

"Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right use of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it only serves to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own."

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

"Every artists dips his brush in his own soul and paints his own nature into his pictures."

"Love is not a possession but a growth."

"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."