American clergyman (1813-1887)
Nothing goes far which has not the wings of love to make it buoyant, so that it can fly.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Defeat is a school in which Truth always grows strong.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Even a liar tells a hundred truths to one lie; he has to, to make the lie good for anything.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Never forget what a man has said to you when he was angry. If he has charged you with anything, you had better look it up. Anger is a bow that will shoot sometimes where another feeling will not.
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
Boys have a period of mischief as much as they have measles or chicken-pox.
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
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
Next to ingratitude, the most painful thing to bear is gratitude.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
No church can be prospered in which all the ministration comes from the pulpit.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Of all earthly music, that which reaches the farthest into heaven is the beating of a loving heart.
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
The advertisements in a newspaper are more full of knowledge in respect to what is going on in a state or community than the editorial columns are.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The great men of earth are the shadowy men, who, having lived and died, now live again and forever through their undying thoughts.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
A man can no more make money suddenly and largely, and be unharmed by it, than one could suddenly grow from a child's stature to a man's without harm.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
As I grow older, and come nearer to death, I look upon it more and more with complacent joy, and out of every longing I hear God say, "O thirsting, hungering one, come to me." What the other life will bring I know not, only that I shall awake in God's likeness, and see him as he is. If a child had been born and spent all his life in the Mammoth Cave, how impossible would it be for him to comprehend the upper world! His parents might tell him of its life, and light, and beauty, and its sounds of joy; they might heap the sand into mounds, and try to show him by pointing to stalactites how grass, and flowers, and trees grow out of the ground, till at length, with laborious thinking, the child would fancy he had gained a true idea of the unknown land. And yet, though he longed to behold it, when the day came that he was to go forth, it would be with regret for the familiar crystals, and the rock-hewn rooms, and the quiet that reigned therein. But when he came up, some May morning, with ten thousand birds singing in the trees, and the heavens bright, and blue, and full of sunlight, and the wind blowing softly through the young leaves, all a-glitter with dew, and the landscape stretching away green and beautiful to the horizon, with what rapture would he gaze about him, and see how poor were all the fancyings and the interpretations which were made within the cave, of the things which grew and lived without; and how would he wonder that he could have regretted to leave the silence and the dreary darkness of his old abode! So, when we emerge from this cave of earth into that land where spring growths are, and where is summer, and not that miserable travesty which we call summer here, how shall we wonder that we could have clung so fondly to this dark and barren life!
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Christians ought not to slander God by looking as if they were at an everlasting funeral.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note, torn in two and burned up, so that it never can be shown against the man.
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
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