American clergyman (1813-1887)
Christians are like vases, they must pass through the fire ere they can shine. The graces which are to be their everlasting beauty and glory must be burned in.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Many people keep their old sins warm while they go to try on virtue and see if they like it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Nothing in this world requires such long seasoning and ripening as new thoughts.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Suffering well borne is better than suffering removed.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Defeat is a school in which Truth always grows strong.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Not to fear where there is occasion, is as great a weakness as to fear unduly, without reason.... Fear is a kind of bell, or gong, which rings the mind into quick life and avoidance upon the approach of danger.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without in himself.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
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
He that lives by the sight of the eye may grow blind.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
It makes a great deal of difference what sort of God men believe in.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Some folks think that Christianity means a kind of insurance policy, and that it has little to do with this life, but that it is a very good thing when a man dies.
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
If any man is rich and powerful, he comes under that law of God by which the higher branches must take the burnings of the sun, and shade those that are lower; by which the tall trees must protect the weak plants beneath them.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
The two poorest men in the world are buckled together at the opposite sides of the circle. The man who has so much money that he does not know what to do with it and the man who has no money at all touch each other, as you will find; and one is about as poor as the other.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
People may talk about the equality of the sexes! They are not equal. The silent smile of a sensible, loving woman will vanquish ten men.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The church is no more religion than the masonry of the aqueduct is the water that flows through it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Take from the Bible the Godship of Christ, and it would be but a heap of dust.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
It is only God who can satisfy the soul.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Heaven answers with us the same purpose that the tuning-fork does with musicians. Our affections, the whole orchestra of them, are apt to get below the concert-pitch; and we take heaven to tune our hearts by.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Death is the dropping of the flower, that the fruit may swell.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit