The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right.
Henry Ward BeecherRead
Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that tears can provide deeper insights into spiritual or emotional truths.
Henry Ward Beecher implies that tears, often viewed as a sign of weakness or sorrow, can actually enhance our perception and understanding of profound truths in life. By experiencing our emotions deeply, we are granted a clearer vision of the spiritual and transcendent aspects of existence, much like a telescope allows us to see distant stars more clearly.
In practice
In a speech about overcoming challenges, you might use this quote to illustrate how vulnerability can lead to greater understanding.
The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right.
A man who cannot get angry is like a stream that cannot overflow, that is always turbid. Sometimes indignation is as good as a thunderstorm in summer, clearing and cooling the air.
No one can deal with the hearts of men unless he has the sympathy which is given by love.
We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.
No man can tell if he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.
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.
These unwritten amenities have been in part responsible for giving our people the feeling of independence and self-confidence, the feeling of creativity. These amenities have dignified the right of dissent and have honored the right to be nonconformists and the right to defy submissiveness. They have encouraged lives of high spirits rather than hushed, suffocating silence.
Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.
The earth is real. Only a fool, milking his cow, denies the cow's reality.
I'll be a story in your head. But that's OK. We're all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, eh? Because it was, you know; it was the best.
Don't lies eventually lead to the truth? And don't all my stories, true or false, tend toward the same conclusion? Don't they all have the same meaning? So what does it matter whether they are true or false if, in both cases, they are significant of what I have been and what I am? Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.
Can you look forward to the future of our country and imagine any state of things in which, with slavery still existing, we should be assured of permanent peace? I cannot.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.