American clergyman (1813-1887)
You have seen a ship out on the bay, swinging with the tide, and seeming as if it would follow it; and yet it cannot, for down beneath the water it is anchored. So many a soul sways toward heaven, but cannot ascend thither, because it is anchored to some secret sin.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Repentance is the turning of the soul from the way of midnight to the point of the coming sun.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Socially we are woven into the fabric of society, where every man is like one thread in a piece of cloth. No single thread has a right to say, "I will stay here no longer," and draw out. No man has a right to make a hole in the well-woven fabric of society.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
There is nothing that makes more cowards and feeble men than public opinion.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
No people are so easy to govern as the intelligent, and none are so hard to govern as the ignorant.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The poor man with industry is happier than the rich man in idleness.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Little lies are very dangerous, because there are so many of them, and because each one of them scours upon the character as diamond-pointed.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
There is no servant like God. No other being so humbles himself, and so bows down under weakness, and so lifts up with his strength, as God in the plenary service of Love.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Wherever you have seen God pass, mark that spot, and go and sit in that window again.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
There are not anywhere else so many ways of trickery, so many false lights, so many veils, so many guises, so many illusive deceits, as are practiced in every man's conscience in respect to his motives, thoughts, feelings, conduct, and character.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Patriotism, in our day, is made to be an argument for all public wrong, and all private meanness. For the sake of country a man is told to yield every thing that makes the land honorable. For the sake of country a man must submit to every ignominy that will lead to the ruin of the state through disgrace of the citizen. There never was a man so unpatriotic as Christ was. Old Jerusalem ought to have been everything to him. The laws and institutions of his country ought to have been more to him than all the men in his country. They were not, and the Jews hated him; but the common people, like the ocean waters, moved in tides towards his heavenly attraction wherever he went.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
The mischiefs of anarchy have been equaled by the mischiefs of government.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A man without a vote ... is like a man without a hand.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Newspapers are to the body politic what arteries are to the human body, their function being to carry blood and sustenance and repair to every part of the body.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
There is in youth a purity of character which, when once touched and defiled, can never be restored; a fringe more delicate than frost-work, and which, when torn and broken, can never be re-embroidered.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
We need not fear shipwreck when God is the pilot.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
That energy which makes a child hard to manage is the energy which afterward makes him a manager of life.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
There is no such thing as preaching patience into people, unless the sermon is so long that they have to practice it while they hear. No man can learn patience except by going out into the hurlyburly world, and taking life just as it blows. Patience is but lying to, and riding out the gale.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
The way to begin a Christian life is not to study theology. Piety before theology. Right living will produce right thinking. Yet many men, when their consciences are aroused, run for catechisms, and commentaries, and systems. They do not mean to be shallow Christians. They intend to be thorough, if they enter upon the Christian life at all. Now, theologies are well in their place; but repentance and love must come before all other experiences. First a cure for your sin-sick soul, and then theologies. Suppose a man were taken with the cholera, and, instead of sending for a physician, he should send to a bookstore, and buy all the books which have been written on the human system, and, while the disease was working in his vitals, he should say, "I'll not put myself in the hands of any of these doctors. I shall probe this thing to the bottom." Would it not be better for him first to be cured of the cholera?
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
God's hand, like a sign-board, is pointing toward democracy, and saying to the nations of the earth, "This is the way: walk ye in it."
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit