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The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.

Henry Ward Beecher

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Henry Ward Beecher
Journalist
Minister
Politician
Theologian
Litchfield (town)
Connecticut
Anarchy
Worst
Next
Government
Thing
World

More quotes by Henry Ward Beecher

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Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.
Henry Ward Beecher
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You can imagine thistle-down so light that when you run after it your running motion would drive it away from you, and that the more you tried to catch it the faster it would fly from your grasp. And it should be with every man, that, when he is chased by troubles, they, chasing, shall raise him higher and higher.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Theology is but a science of applied to God. As schools change theology must necessarily change. Truth is everlasting, but our ideas of truth are not. Theology is but our ideas of truth classified and arranged.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Public sentiment is to public officers what water is to the wheel of the mill.
Henry Ward Beecher
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It is a very good world for the purposes for which it was built and that is all anything is good for.
Henry Ward Beecher
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There is a patience that cackles. There are a great many virtues that are hen-like. They are virtue, to be sure but everybody in the neighborhood has to know about them.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Nothing marks the change from the city to the country so much as the absence of grinding noises. The country is never silent. But its sounds are separate, distinct, and as it were, articulate.
Henry Ward Beecher
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The Bible is God's chart for you to steer by, to keep you from the bottom of the sea, and to show you where the harbor is, and how to reach it without running on rocks or bars.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Laughter is day, and sobriety is night a smile is the twilight that hovers gently between both, more bewitching than either.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Books are the true metempsychosis,--they are the symbol and presage of immortality. The dead men are scattered, and none shall find them. Behold they are here! they do but sleep.
Henry Ward Beecher
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You are not called to be a canary in a cage. You are called to be an eagle, and to fly sun to sun, over continents.
Henry Ward Beecher
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The prouder a man is, the more he thinks he deserves, and the more he thinks he deserves, the less he really does deserve.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Reading is a dissuasion from immorality. Reading stands in the place of company.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Involved sentences, crooked, circuitous, and parenthetical, no matter how musically they may be balanced, are prejudicial to a facile understanding of the truth.
Henry Ward Beecher
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There is no such thing as preaching patience into people, unless the sermon is so long that they have to practice it while they hear. No man can learn patience except by going out into the hurlyburly world, and taking life just as it blows. Patience is but lying to, and riding out the gale.
Henry Ward Beecher
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The diameter of each day is measured by the stretch of thought - not by the rising and setting of the sun.
Henry Ward Beecher
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There is not a heart but has its moments of longing, yearning for something better nobler holier than it knows now.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Men are not put into this world to be everlastingly played on by the harping fingers of joy.
Henry Ward Beecher
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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
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Love cannot endure indifference. It needs to be wanted. Like a lamp, it needs to be fed out of the oil of another's heart, or its flame burns low.
Henry Ward Beecher