HENRY WARD BEECHER QUOTES IV

American clergyman (1813-1887)

God sends ten thousand 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 a while upon the roof and then fly away.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


God builds for every sinner, if he will but come back, a highway of golden promises from the depths of degradation and sin clear up to the Father's house.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Perverted pride is a great misfortune in men; but pride in its original function, for which God created it, is indispensable to a proper manhood.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


The law is a batter, which protects all that is behind it, but sweeps with destruction all that is outside.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Christianity is simply the ideal form of manhood represented to us by Jesus Christ.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Love is ownership. We own whom we love. The universe is God's because he loves.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Every man carries a menagerie in himself; and, by stirring him up all around, you will find every sort of animal represented there.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


It is often said it is no matter what a man believes if he is only sincere. This is true of all minor truths, and false of all truths whose nature it is to fashion a man's life. It will make no difference in a man's harvest whether he thinks turnips have more saccharine matter than potatoes--whether corn is better than wheat. But let the man sincerely believe that seed planted without ploughing is as good as with, that January is as favorable for seed sowing as April, and that cockle seed will produce as good a harvest as wheat, and will it make no difference?

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Men are not put into this world to be everlastingly played on by the harping fingers of joy.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Of all battles, there are none like the unrecorded battles of the soul.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


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


When a man's pride is thoroughly subdued, it is like the sides of Mount Etna. It was terrible while the eruption lasted and the lava flowed; but when that is past, and the lava is turned into soil, it grows vineyards and olive trees up to the very top.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Royal Truths


Blessed be the man whose work drives him. Something must drive men; and if it is wholesome industry, they have no time for a thousand torments and temptations.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


This world is magnificent for strangers and pilgrims, but miserable for residents.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Riches are not an end of life but an instrument of life.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


A woman's pity often opens the door to love.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


When our cup runs over, we let others drink the drops that fall, but not a drop from within the rim, and call it charity; when the crumbs are swept from our table, we think it generous to let the dogs eat them; as if that were charity which permits others to have what we cannot keep.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


A lie is a very short wick in a very small lamp. The oil of reputation is very soon sucked up and gone. And just as soon as a man is known to lie, he is like a two-foot pump in a hundred-foot well. He cannot touch bottom at all.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit