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Liberty is the soul's right to breathe and, when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight.

Henry Ward Beecher

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Henry Ward Beecher
Journalist
Minister
Politician
Theologian
Litchfield (town)
Connecticut
Long
Breathe
Laws
Liberty
Law
Cannot
Soul
Tight
Take
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More quotes by Henry Ward Beecher

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All our other faculties seem to have the brown touch of earth upon them, but the imagination carries the very livery of heaven, and is God's self in the soul.
Henry Ward Beecher
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A man who cannot get angry is like a stream that cannot overflow, that is always turbid. Sometimes indignation is as good as a thunderstorm in summer, clearing and cooling the air.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Truthfulness is godliness.
Henry Ward Beecher
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While a man is stringing a harp, he tries the strings, not for music, but for construction. When it is finished it shall be played for melodies. God is fashioning the human heart for future joy. He only sounds a string here and there to see how far His work has progressed.
Henry Ward Beecher
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You have seen a ship out on the bay, swinging with the tide, and seeming as if it would follow it and yet it cannot, for down beneath the water it is anchored. So many a soul sways toward heaven, but cannot ascend thither, because it is anchored to some secret sin.
Henry Ward Beecher
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A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself, and a mean man, by one lower than himself.
Henry Ward Beecher
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It is a man dying with his harness on that angels love to escort upward.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Our flag means all that our fathers meant in the Revolutionary War. It means all that the Declaration of Independence meant. It means justice. It means liberty. It means happiness.... Every color means liberty. Every thread means liberty. Every star and stripe means liberty.
Henry Ward Beecher
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What is the Bible in your house? It is not the Old Testament, it is not the New Testament, it is not the Gospel according to Matthew, or Mark, or Luke, or John it is the Gospel according to William it is the Gospel according to Mary it is the Gospel according to Henry and James it is the Gospel according to your name. You write your own Bible.
Henry Ward Beecher
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It will not do to be saints at meeting and sinners everywhere else.
Henry Ward Beecher
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A thoughtful mind, when it sees a Nation's flag, sees not the flag only, but the Nation itself and whatever may be its symbols, its insignia, he reads chiefly in the flag the Government, the principles, the truths, the history which belongs to the Nation that sets it forth.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Morality must always precede and accompany religion, and yet religion is much more than morality.
Henry Ward Beecher
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There is not on earth so base a knave as the man who wins the love of a woman when he knows that he cannot or ought not to requite it.
Henry Ward Beecher
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If men had wings and bore black feathers, Few of them would be clever enough to be crows.
Henry Ward Beecher
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It is not merely cruelty that leads men to love war, it is excitement.
Henry Ward Beecher
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We rejoice in God since he has taught us that every thing which is true in us, is but a faint expression of what is in him. And thus all our joys become to us the echo of higher joys, and our very life is as a dream of that nobler life, to which we shall awaken when we die.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Your greatest pleasure is that which rebounds from hearts that you have made glad.
Henry Ward Beecher
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So we fall asleep in Jesus. We have played long enough at the games of life, and at last we feel the approach of death. We are tired out, and we lay our heads back on the bosom of Christ, and quietly fall asleep.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Thorough selfishness destroys or paralyzes enjoyment. A heart made selfish by the contest for wealth is like a citadel stormed in war, utterly shattered.
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