HENRY WARD BEECHER QUOTES XIII

American clergyman (1813-1887)

Take from the Bible the Godship of Christ, and it would be but a heap of dust.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Sorrows are gardeners: they plant flowers along waste places, and teach vines to cover barren heaps.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Righteousness is as hereditary as vice, and godly men transmit moral qualities to their children, and to their children's children.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Men think religion bears the same relation to life that flowers do to trees. The tree must grow through a long period before the blossoming time; so they think religion is to be a blossom just before death, to secure heaven. But the Bible represents religion, not as the latest fruit of life, but as the whole of it--beginning, middle, and end. It is simply right living.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Many men carry their conscience like a drawn sword, cutting this way and that, in the world, but sheathe it, and keep it very soft and quiet, when it is turned within, thinking that a sword should not be allowed to cut its own scabbard.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Life is full of amusement to an amusing man.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Liberty is the soul's right to breathe, and when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


It is not desirable that we should live as in the constant atmosphere and presence of death; that would unfit us for life; but it is well for us, now and then, to talk with death as friend talketh with friend, and to bathe in the strange seas, and to anticipate the experiences of that land to which it will lead us. These forethinkings are meant, not to make us discontented with life, but to bring us back with more strength, and a nobler purpose in living.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


If you are idle, you are on the road to ruin; and there are few stopping places upon it. It is rather a precipice than a road.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Lectures to Young Men on Various Important Subjects


If every child might live the life predestined in a mother's heart, all the way from the cradle to the coffin, he would walk upon a beam of light, and shine in glory.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Do not be troubled because you have not great virtues. God made a million spears of grass where he made one tree. The earth is fringed and carpeted, not with forests, but with grasses. Only have enough of little virtues and common fidelities, and you need not mourn because you are neither a hero nor a saint.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Adversity is the mint in which God stamps upon man his image and superscription.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


A man that puts himself on the ground of moral principle, if the whole world be against him, is mightier than all of them.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


A man has a right to picture God according to his need, whatever it be.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Where human life needs most sympathy, where usually it is the most barren, there it is that Christ is more likely to be found than anywhere else.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Unless you have singing in the family and singing in the house, singing everywhere, until it becomes a habit, you never can have congregational singing; it will be the cold drops, half water, half ice, which drip in March from some cleft of rock, one drop here and another there; whereas it should be like the August shower, which comes ten million drops at once, and roars on the roof.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Truths are first clouds, then rain, then harvests and food.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


That is the best baptism that leaves the man cleanest inside.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without in himself.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Religion would save a man; Christ would make him worth saving.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit