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The one great poem of New England is her Sunday.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Any law that takes hold of a mans daily life cannot prevail in a community, unless the vast majority of the community are actively in favor of it. The laws that are the most operative are the laws which protect life.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Adversity
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We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Affliction comes to us all, not to make us sad, but sober; not to make us sorry, but to make us wise; not to make us despondent, but by its darkness to refresh us as the night refreshes the day; not to impoverish, but to enrich us.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Ambition
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All ambitions are lawful except those that climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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America
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The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Anger
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If a man meets with injustice, it is not required that he shall not be roused to meet it; but if he is angry after he has had time to think upon it, that is sinful. The flame is not wring, but the coals are.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Never forget what a person says to you when they are angry.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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The continuance and frequent fits of anger produce in the soul a propensity to be angry; which oftentimes ends in choler, bitterness, and moronity, when the mid becomes ulcerated, peevish, and querulous, and is wounded by the least occurrence.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Animals
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The dog is the god of frolic.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Appearance
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Clothes and manners do not make the man; but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Art
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Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Attitude
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Life would be a perpetual flea hunt if a man were obliged to run down all the innuendoes, inveracities, and insinuations and misrepresentations which are uttered against him.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Character
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A man's character is the reality of himself; his reputation, the opinion others have formed about him; character resides in him, reputation in other people; that is the substance, this is the shadow.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Charity
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There never was a person who did anything worth doing, who did not receive more than he gave.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Christianity
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A Christian is nothing but a sinful man who has put himself to school for Christ for the honest purpose of becoming better.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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The test of Christian character should be that a man is a joy-bearing agent to the world.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Class
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The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Coffee (or Tea)
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A cup of coffee - real coffee - home-browned, home ground, home made, that comes to you dark as a hazel-eye, but changes to a golden bronze as you temper it with cream that never cheated, but was real cream from its birth, thick, tenderly yellow, perfectly sweet, neither lumpy nor frothing on the Java: such a cup of coffee is a match for twenty blue devils and will exorcise them all.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Common Sense
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The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Conservatism
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When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Criticism
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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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Culture
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That is true culture which helps us to work for the social betterment of all.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Cynicism
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The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Danger
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The most dangerous people are the ignorant.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Death
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Death is the dropping of the flower that the fruit may swell.
-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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Debt / Borrow / Loan
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Interest works night and day in fair weather and in foul. It gnaws at a man's substance with invisible teeth.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Defeat
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Defeat is a school in which truth always grows strong.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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It is defeat that turns bone to flint; it is defeat that turns gristle to muscle; it is defeat that makes men invincible.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Difficulty
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Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Discipline
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No man is such a conqueror, as the one that has defeated himself.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Duty
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He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Education
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Education is the knowledge of how to use the whole of oneself. Many men use but one or two faculties out of the score with which they are endowed. A man is educated who knows how to make a tool of every faculty--how to open it, how to keep it sharp, and how to apply it to all practical purposes.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Enthusiasm
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In things pertaining to enthusiasm, no man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Mirth is the sweet wine of human life. It should be offered sparkling with zestful life unto God.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Excellence
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Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Experience
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Our days are a kaleidoscope. Every instant a change takes place in the contents. New harmonies, new contrasts, new combinations of every sort. Nothing ever happens twice alike. The most familiar people stand each moment in some new relation to each other, to their work, to surrounding objects. The most tranquil house, with the most serene inhabitants, living upon the utmost regularity of system, is yet exemplifying infinite diversities.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Family
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The babe at first feeds upon the mother's bosom, but it is always on her heart.
-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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Fear
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Fear secretes acids; but love and trust are sweet juices.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Feelings
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See that each hour's feelings, and thoughts and actions are pure and true; then your life will be also.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Forgiveness
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Every man should keep a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Giving The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offense into everlasting forgiveness.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a canceled note -- torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I cannot forgive.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Repentance is another name for aspiration.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Freedom
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True obedience is true freedom.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Friends
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Keep a fair-sized cemetery in your back yard, in which to bury the faults of your friends.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Generosity
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Every charitable act is a stepping stone toward heaven.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Genius
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Genius unexerted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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God
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God's providence is on the side of clear heads.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Gossip
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He who hunts for flowers will finds flowers; and he who loves weeds will find weeds.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Government
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The worst thing in the world next to anarchy, is government.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Grace
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God appoints our graces to be nurses to other men's weaknesses.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Gratitude
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A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Next to ingratitude the most painful thing to bear is gratitude.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Remember God's bounty in the year. String the pearls of His favor. Hide the dark parts, except so far as they are breaking out in light! Give this one day to thanks, to joy, to gratitude!
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Hate
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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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Health
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It's not the work which kills people, it's the worry. It's not the revolution that destroys machinery it's the friction.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Heart
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The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Heaven
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Heaven will be inherited by every man who has heaven in his soul.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Heroes/Heroism
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The world's battlefields have been in the heart chiefly; more heroism has been displayed in the household and the closet, than on the most memorable battlefields in history.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Humanity
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The real man is one who always finds excuses for others, but never excuses himself.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Humor
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A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs-jolted by every pebble in the road.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Ideas
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We are not to make the ideas of contentment and aspiration quarrel, for God made them fast friends. A man may aspire, and yet be quite content until it is time to raise; and both flying and resting are but parts of one contentment. The very fruit of the gospel is aspiration. It is to the heart what spring is to the earth, making every root, and bud, and bough desire to be more. -
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Identity
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A man's true state of power and riches is to be in himself.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Imagination
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The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Investment
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Gambling with cards or dice or stocks is all one thing. It's getting money without giving an equivalent for it.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Joy, Excitement
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In this world, full often, our joys are only the tender shadows which our sorrows cast.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Laughter
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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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Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety--all this rust of life--ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Law
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Laws and institutions, like clocks, must occasionally be cleaned, wound up, and set to true time.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Leadership
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He is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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The humblest individual exerts some influence, either for good or evil, upon others.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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What a mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Libraries
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A library is but the soul's burying ground. It is a land of shadows.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Loss
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Do not be afraid of defeat. You are never so near to victory as when defeated in a good cause.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Love
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Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep-burning, unquenchable.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Love is the river of life in the world.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Marriage
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Well married a person has wings, poorly married shackles.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Medicine
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To array a man's will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Money
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It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Morals
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Morality is character and conduct such as is required by the circle or community in which the man's life happens to be placed. It shows how much good men require of us.
-Henry Ward Beecher, Life of Thoughts, 1858
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Mother
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The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Motivational
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God made man to go by motives, and he will not go without them, any more than a boat without steam or a balloon without gas.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Music
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This world is not a platform where you will hear Thalberg-piano-playing. It is a piano manufactory, where are dust and shavings and boards, and saws and files and rasps and sandpapers. The perfect instrument and the music will be hereafter.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Opinion
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Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Pain
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The moment an ill can be patiently handled, it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Parenting
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We never know the love of the parent till we become parents ourselves.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Perfection
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I don't like these cold, precise, perfect people who, in order not to speak wrong, never speak at all, and in order not to do wrong, never do anything.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Persistence
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The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is, that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Personality
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Good nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor, to the persons who possess it.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Praise
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The meanest, most contemptible kind of praise is that which first speaks well of a man, and then qualifies it with a But.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Prayer
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It is not well for a man to pray cream and live skim milk.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Present, the
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No matter what looms ahead, if you can eat today, enjoy the sunlight today, mix good cheer with friends today, enjoy it and bless God for it. Do not look back on happiness -- or dream of it in the future. You are only sure of today; do not let yourself be cheated out of it.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Principles
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Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Reading
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A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Religion
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The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Theology is a science of mind applied to God.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Theology is but our ideas of truth classified and arranged.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Sacrifice
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In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Sanity
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No man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Secrets
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To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Selfishness
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Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without in himself.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Sleep
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We sleep, but the loom of life never stops, and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up in the morning.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Strength
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The strength of a man consists in finding out the way God is going, and going that way.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Success & Failure
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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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Success is full of promise till one gets it, and then it seems like a nest from which the bird has flown.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Ones best success comes after their greatest disappointments.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Suffering
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Suffering is part of the divine idea.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Time
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A grindstone that had not grit in it, how long would it take to sharpen an ax? And affairs that had not grit in them, how long would they take to make a man?
-Henry Ward Beecher
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The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Tolerance
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Nothing dies so hard, or rallies so often as intolerance.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Tools
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A tool is but the extension of a man's hand, and a machine is but a complex tool. And he that invents a machine augments the power of a man and the well-being of mankind.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Trouble, Troubles
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When we borrow trouble, and look forward into the future and see what storms are coming, and distress ourselves before they come, as to how we shall avert them if they ever do come, we lose our proper trustfulness in God. When we torment ourselves with imaginary dangers, or trials, or reverses, we have already parted with that perfect love which casteth out fear.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Truth
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There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Victory
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Victories that are easy are cheap. Those only are worth having which come as the result of hard fighting.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Wealth
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Riches are not an end of life, but an instrument of life.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Words
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All words are pegs to hang ideas on.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Work
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Work is not a curse, but drudgery is!
-Henry Ward Beecher
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In the ordinary business of life, industry can do anything which genius can do, and very many things which it cannot.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Victories are easy and cheap. The only victories worth anything are those achieved through hard work and dedication.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Worry
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It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more upon a man than he can bear. Worry is the rust upon the blade. It is not the revolution which destroys the machinery but the friction. Fear secretes acids; but love and trust are sweet juices
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Worth
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He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.
-Henry Ward Beecher
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Books by and about Henry Ward Beecher
