HENRY WARD BEECHER QUOTES VI

American clergyman (1813-1887)

Nobody ever sees truth except in fragments.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


In America there is not one single element of civilization that is not made to depend, in the end, upon public opinion.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Character, like porcelain-ware, must be painted before it is glazed. There can be no change of color after it is burned in.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


As long as society is absolutely divided as milk is, the cream being at the top and the impoverished milk at the bottom, so long will society be unbalanced, and liable to be thrown into convulsions out of which will spring wars. A circulation throughout keeps it in health.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


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

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


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


Men who act under dishonest passions are like men riding fierce horses: they cannot stop when they will, and they ride to ruin.

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


A man without a vote ... is like a man without a hand.

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


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


Repentance is the turning of the soul from the way of midnight to the point of the coming sun.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Do not give, as many rich men do, like a hen that lays her egg and then cackles.

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


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


Men go shopping just as men go out fishing or hunting, to see how large a fish may be caught with the smallest hook.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Spreading Christianity abroad is sometimes an excuse for not having it at home.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Nowhere on the globe do men live so well as in America, or grumble so much.

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


Every thought and feeling is a painting stroke, in the darkness, of our likeness that is to be; and our whole life is but a chamber, which we are frescoing with colors that do not appear while being laid on wet, but which will shine forth afterwards, when finished and dry.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts