Quote

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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Henry Ward Beecher
Journalist
Minister
Politician
Theologian
Litchfield (town)
Connecticut
Men
Future
Construction
Stringing
Sound
Strings
Fashioning
Music
Melody
Progressed
Human
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The methods by which men have met and conquered trouble, or been slain by it, are the same in every age.
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Some people think black is the color of heaven, and that the more they can make their faces look like midnight, the more evidence they have of grace. But God, who made the sun and the flowers, never sent me to proclaim to you such a lie as that.
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We are apt to believe in Providence so long as we have our own way but if things go awry, then we think, if there is a God, he is in heaven, and not on earth.
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By religion I mean perfected manhood,--the quickening of the soul by the influence of the Divine Spirit.
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There is no greater crime than to stand between a man and his development to take any law or institution and put it around him like a collar, and fasten it there, so that as he grows and enlarges, he presses against it till he suffocates and dies.
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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.
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We go to the grave of a friend saying, A man is dead, but angels throng about him saying, A man is born.
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There is an ugly kind of forgiveness in this world--a kind of hedgehog forgiveness, shot out like quills.
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A Christianity which will not help those who are struggling from the bottom to the top of society, needs another Christ to die for it.
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As for marigolds, poppies, hollyhocks, and valorous sunflowers, we shall never have a garden without them, both for their own sake, and for the sake of old-fashioned folks, who used to love them.
Henry Ward Beecher
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It is not well for a man to pray cream and live skim milk.
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As flowers carry dewdrops, trembling on the edges of the petals, and ready to fall at the first waft of wind or brush of bird, so the heart should carry its beaded words of thanksgiving and at the first breath of heavenly flavor, let down the shower, perfumed with the heart's gratitude.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Astronomers have built telescopes which can show myriads of stars unseen before but when a man looks through a tear in his own eye, that is a lens which opens reaches into the unknown, and reveals orbs which no telescope, however skilfully constructed, could do.
Henry Ward Beecher
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God's men are better than the devil's men, and they ought to act as though they thought they were.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Speak of the appetite for drink or of a bon-vivant's relish for dinner! What are these mere animal throes and ragings compared with those fantasies of taste, of those yearning of the imagination, of those insatiable appetites of intellect, which bewilder a student in a great bookseller's temptation-hall.
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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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Prayer covers the whole of man's life. There is no thought, feeling, yearning, or desire, however low, trifling, or vulgar we may deem it, which if it affects our real interest or happiness, we may not lay before God and be sure of sympathy.
Henry Ward Beecher
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We should not judge people by their peak of excellence but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.
Henry Ward Beecher
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There is no faculty of the human soul so persistent and universal as that of hatred.
Henry Ward Beecher
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The unthankful heart... discovers no mercies but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!
Henry Ward Beecher