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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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Henry Ward Beecher
Journalist
Minister
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Litchfield (town)
Connecticut
Ideas
Nobility
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More quotes by Henry Ward Beecher

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Living is death dying is life. We are not what we appear to be. On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that citizens on this side orphans, on that children.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Give us that calm certainty of truth, that nearness to Thee, that conviction of the reality of the life to come, which we shall need to bear us through the troubles of this.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.
Henry Ward Beecher
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The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Our government is built upon the vote. But votes that are purchasable are quicksands, and a government built on them stands upon corruption and revolution.
Henry Ward Beecher
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The whole of the Saviour's ministerial life, at least the part of it that stands on record, was passed in what we may call substantially a revival work.
Henry Ward Beecher
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There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Some men are like pyramids, which are very broad where they touch the ground, but grow narrow as they reach the sky.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Conceited men often seem a harmless kind of men, who, by an overweening self-respect, relieve others from the duty of respecting them at all.
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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There are many persons who look on Sunday as a sponge to wipe out the sins of the week
Henry Ward Beecher
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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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The beginnings of moral enterprises in this world are never to be measured by any apparent growth. ... At length comes the sudden ripeness and the full success, and he who is called in at the final moment deems this success his own. He is but the reaper and not the labourer. Other men sowed and tilled and he but enters into their labours.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Self-government by the whole people is the teleologic idea. The republican form of government is the noblest and the best, as it is the latest.
Henry Ward Beecher
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The things that hurt us teach us.
Henry Ward Beecher
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A man ought to carry himself in the world as an orange tree would if it could walk up and down in the garden, swinging perfume from every little censer it holds up in the air.
Henry Ward Beecher
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Find out what your temptations are, and you will find out largely what you are yourself.
Henry Ward Beecher
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By religion I mean perfected manhood,--the quickening of the soul by the influence of the Divine Spirit.
Henry Ward Beecher
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An ambition which has conscience in it will always be a laborious and faithful engineer, and will build the road, and bridge the chasms between itself and eminent success by the most faithful and minute performances of duty.
Henry Ward Beecher
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But there have been human hearts, constituted just like ours, for six thousand years. The same stars rise and set upon this globe that rose upon the plains of Shinar or along the Egyptian Nile and the same sorrows rise and set in every age.
Henry Ward Beecher