Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

Grace changes us and change is painful".

As the most generous vine, if it is not pruned, runs out into many superfluous stems, and grows at last weak and fruitless; so dote the best man, if he be not cut short of his desires and pruned with afflictions. If it be painful to bleed, it is worse to wither. Let me be pruned, that I may grow, rather than be cut up to burn.

I am afraid that all the grace that I have got of my comfortable and easy times and happy hours, might almost lie on a penny. But the good that I have received from my sorrows, and pains, and griefs, is altogether incalculable … Affliction is the best bit of furniture in my house. It is the best book in a minister’s library.

It's like growing lotus flowers. You cannot grow lotus flowers on marble. You have to grow them on the mud. Without mud you cannot have lotus flowers. Without suffering, you have no way to learn how to be understanding and compassionate.

The agony of a man's affliction is often necessary to put him into the right mood to face the fundamental things of life. The Psalmist says: "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now have I kept Thy Word.

It's an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater lustre to our colours, a richer resonance to our words. That is, if it doesn't destroy us, if it doesn't burn away the optimism and the spirit, the capacity for visions, and the respect for simple yet indispensable things.

If ever we are going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed; you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed. I wonder what kind of finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you, and you have been like a marble and escaped?

Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.

You take the negative, the bitter, the pain, the suffering, the depression, and all of those are ingredients for something far more purposeful than you can imagine.

I am even thankful for the negative things that have made me a stronger and better person.

If you did not face problems you would just drift through life. It is through solving problems in accordance with the highest light we have that inner growth is attained.

"Great suffering has a silver-lining that we can be grateful for, because it builds up a human being and puts him or her within reach of self-knowledge."

The thing is, the only real sign of life is growth. And growth requires pain. So to choose life is to accept pain.

I think there can always be beauty in struggle.

Pain is the great teacher of mankind. Beneath its breath souls develop.

Without dark clouds in our lives, we would never know the joy of sunshine. We can become callous and unteachable if we do not learn from pain.

Saints spring and thrive most internally, when they are most externally afflicted. Afflictions are the mother of virtue.

Your emptiness is but the preparation for your being filled, and your casting down is but the making ready for your lifting up.

Conflicts bring experience and experience brings that growth in Grace which is not to be attained by any other means!

When every situation which life can offer is turned to the profit of spiritual growth, no situation can really be a bad one.

God makes the life fertile by disappointments, as he makes the ground fertile by frosts.

It is the wind and the rain, O God, the cold and the storm that make this earth of yours to blossom and bear its fruit. So in our lives it is storm and stress and hurt and suffering that make real men and women bring the world's work to its highest perfection.

There is the mud, and there is the lotus that grows out of the mud. We need the mud in order to make the lotus.

A life without problems would be a barren existence, without the opportunity for spiritual growth.