Quote

It is not what we read, but what we remember, that makes us learned. It is not what we intend, but what we do that makes us useful. It is not a few faint wishes, but a life long struggle, that makes us valiant.

Henry Ward Beecher

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Henry Ward Beecher
Journalist
Minister
Politician
Theologian
Litchfield (town)
Connecticut
Makes
Faint
Remember
Intend
Long
Wishes
Life
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Learned
Struggle
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More quotes by Henry Ward Beecher

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No grief has a right to immortality. That ground belongs to joy, to hope, to faith.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith. We should live for the future, and yet should find our life in the fidelities of the present the last is only the method of the first.
Henry Ward Beecher
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What place is so rugged and so homely that there is no beauty if you only have a sensibility to beauty?
Henry Ward Beecher
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Only have enough of little virtues and common fidelities, and you need not mourn because you are neither a hero nor a saint.
Henry Ward Beecher
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The thistle is a prince. Let any man that has an eye for beauty take a view of the whole plant, and where will he see a more expressive grace and symmetry and where is there a more kingly flower?
Henry Ward Beecher
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Some men think that the globe is a sponge that God puts into their hands to squeeze for their own garden or flower-pot.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Home should be an oratorio of the memory, singing to all our after life melodies and harmonies of old-remembered joy.
Henry Ward Beecher
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The elect, those who will the non-elect, those who won't.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Many men are stored full of unused knowledge. Like loaded guns that are never fired off, or military magazines in times of peace, they are stuffed with useless ammunition.
Henry Ward Beecher
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A boy is a piece of existence quite separate from all things else, and deserves separate chapters in the natural history of men.
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It is a man dying with his harness on that angels love to escort upward.
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Of all formal things in the world, a clipped hedge is the most formal and of all the informal things in the world, a forest tree is the most informal.
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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Be a hard master to yourself - and be lenient to everybody else.
Henry Ward Beecher
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To become an able and successful man in any profession, three things are necessary, nature, study and practice.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Sorrow makes men sincere.
Henry Ward Beecher
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A law is valuable not because it is law, but because there is right in it.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Human life is God's outer church. Its needs and urgencies are priests and pastors.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Adversity, if for no other reason, is of benefit, since it is sure to bring a season of sober reflection. People see clearer at such times. Storms purify the atmosphere.
Henry Ward Beecher