Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

Repentance, as we know, is basically not moaning and remorse, but turning and change.

Regeneration can come only through a change of heart in the individual.

True atonement isn't the periodic shaving of karmic stubble via confessional; it requires deep, truthful change. It means doing the hardest thing of all: not making the same stupid mistake again.

Life isn’t like the movies. People don’t change overnight. people don’t go from arrogant and self-righteous to ashamed and remorseful. They don’t suddenly give in when they’ve spent years taking out. No doesn’t magically become a Yes.

Good moral actions are not enough. Everything in us, from the very depths, must be cleansed and reordered.

Is it possible, I wonder, for a man to truly change? Or do character and habit form the immovable boundaries of our lives?

Man cannot be transformed from bad to good overnight.

True repentance also involves reform.

God desires to change us from the inside out. Renewing our minds, starving our self-destructive tendencies, and teaching us to form new habits.

It would be nice and fairly nearly true, to say that 'from that time forth, Eustace was a different boy.' To be strictly accurate, he began to be a different boy. He had relapses. There were still many days when he could be very tiresome. But most of those I shall not notice. The cure had begun.

Changing your nature is the hardest thing to do. But I discovered that you can be who you choose to be.

I learnt one thing in the past or in my life: the only person you can change is yourself, and it has to come from within.

Redemption just means you just make a change in your life and you try to do right, versus what you were doing, which was wrong.

I do not believe in political movements. I believe in personal movement, that movement of the soul when a man who looks at himself is so ashamed that he tries to make some sort of change - within himself, not on the outside.

Most people already know what they're doing wrong. When I get them to church I want to tell them that you can change.

The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.

You change your life by changing your heart.

I have to believe that people can change, otherwise I deny the Gospel, and I will not do that.

Repentance means you change your mind so deeply that it changes you.

… the field of action is not the field of intellect, it is the field of character; and change or development of character is always slow work.

Spiritual principles do not change, but we do.

I'm all about people being able to redeem themselves.

Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does: otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change, we develop new habits and eccentricities; but that's something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that character peaks a little later: between twenty and thirty, say. And after that, we're just stuck with what we've got. We're on our own. If so, that would explain a lot of lives, wouldn't it? And also - if this isn't too grand a word - our tragedy.

I'm always fascinated with how a person becomes a good quality person, a productive person, and how it happened to me, because I was a terror.

The thing for me is, what if one returns to these maxims, these rather simplistic maxims "Be the change you want to see in the world." Because what canvas have we but the self for these kind of explorations, ultimately.