Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking.

Without integrity and conscience we lose our freedom.

A person may be qualified to do greater good to mankind and become more beneficial to the world, by morality without faith than by faith without morality.

We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.

There is no stronger test of a person's character than power and authority, exciting as they do every passion, and discovering every latent vice.

Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our deeds.

Purity of personal life is the one indispensable condition for building up a sound education.

Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.

Integrity means being whole, unbroken, undivided. It describes a person who has united the different parts of his or her personality, so there is no longer a split in the soul ... For the person of integrity, life may not be easy but it is simple: Figure out what is right and do it. All other considerations come in second.

Integrity in the Moment of Choice: Quality of life depends on what happens in the space between stimulus and response.

Character is a quality that embodies many important traits, such as integrity, courage, perseverance, confidence and wisdom. Unlike your fingerprints that you are born with and can't change, character is something that you create within yourself and must take responsibility for changing

You don't luck into integrity. You work at it.

It is the duty of every one to strive to gain and deserve a good reputation.

It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.

And that whole do-able/undo-able thing? Yeah. Need I point out that neither Ruth nor I have ever "done" anybody in our lives?

For no phase of life, whether public or private, whether in business or in the home, whether one is working on what concerns oneself alone or dealing with another, can be without its moral duty; on the discharge of such duties depends all that is morally right, and on their neglect all that is morally wrong in life.

A man is not to aim at innocence, any more than he is to aim at hair, but he is to keep it.

True freedom is not the liberty to do anything we please, but the liberty to do what we ought; and it is genuine liberty because doing what we ought now pleases us

The virtuous man is driven by responsibility, the non-virtuous man is driven by profit.

Character cannot be summoned at the moment of crisis if it has been squandered by years of compromise and rationalization. The only testing ground for the heroic is the mundane. The only preparation for that one profound decision which can change a life, or even a nation, is those hundreds of half-conscious, self defining, seemingly insignificant decisions made in private. Habit is the daily battleground of character.

Integrity is honesty carried through the fibres of the being and the whole mind, into thought as well as action so that the person is complete in honesty. That kind of integrity I put above all else as an essential to leadership.

People of poor character tend to blame their choices on circumstances. Ethical people make good choices regardless of circumstances. If they make enough good choices, they begin to create better conditions for themselves.

There is no man but for his own interest hath an obligation to be honest. There may be sometimes temptations to be otherwise; but, all cards cast up, he shall find it the greatest ease, the highest profit, the best pleasure, the most safety, and the noblest fame, to hold the horns of this altar, which, in all assays, can in himself protect him.

Logic and ethics are fundamentally the same, they are no more than duty to oneself

Be moral. Be brave. Be a heart-whole man, strictly moral, brave unto desperation. Don't bother your head with religious theories. Cowards only sin, brave men never, no, not even in mind.