Henry Ward Beecher

For fidelity, devotion, love, many a two-legged animal is below the dog and the horse. Happy would it be for thousands of people if they could stand at last before the Judgment Seat and say "I have loved as truly and I have lived as decently as my dog." And yet we call them "only brutes"!

The greatest architect and the one most needed is hope.

You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; but you must approach each man by the right door.

A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which it turns.

Flowers . . . have a mysterious and subtle influence upon the feelings, not unlike some strains of music. They relax the tenseness of the mind. They dissolve its rigor.

Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and hollyhock.

It is the very wantonness of folly for a man to search out the frets and burdens of his calling and give his mind every day to a consideration of them. They belong to human life. They are inevitable. Brooding only gives them strength.

Genius unexerted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.

Do not keep the alabaster boxes of your love and tenderness sealed up until your friends are dead. Fill their lives with sweetness. Speak approving, cheering words while their ears can hear them and while their hearts can be thrilled by them.

God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offense into everlasting forgetfulness.