HENRY WARD BEECHER QUOTES VIII

American clergyman (1813-1887)

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


Some plants of the bitterest root have the whitest and sweetest blossoms; so the bitterest wrong has the sweetest repentance.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


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

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


As the imagination is set to look into the invisible and immaterial, it seems to attract something of their vitality; and though it can give nothing to the body to redeem it from years, it can give to the soul that freshness of youth in old age which is even more beautiful than youth in the young.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


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


Life is a plant that grows out of death.

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


It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


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


Woman began at zero, and has through ages slowly unfolded and risen. Each age has protested against growth as unsexing woman.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


A man that does nothing but watch evil, never will overcome it.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Sin is sweet in the mouth and bitter in digestion. It lies hard on the stomach.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Some sins, like asps, always carry their sting with them.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


A lie always needs a truth for a handle to it, else the hand would cut itself which sought to drive it home upon another. The worst lies, therefore, are those whose blade is false, but whose handle is true.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


An ambition which has conscience in it will always be a laborious and faithful engineer, and will build the road, and bridge the chasms between itself and eminent success by the most faithful and minute performances of duty.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Surely, of all things that are, snow is the most beautiful and the most feeble! Born of air-drops, less than the fallen dew, disorganized by a puff of warmth, driven everywhere by the least motion of the winds, each particle light and soft, and falling to the earth with such noiseless gentleness, that the wings of ten million times ten million makes no sound in the air, and the footfall of thrice as many makes no noise.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

attributed, Day's Collacon


It takes a man to make a devil.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


One might as well attempt to calculate mathematically the contingent forms of the tinkling bits of glass in a kaleidoscope as to look through the tube of the future and foretell its pattern.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts