American clergyman (1813-1887)
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
No church can be prospered in which all the ministration comes from the pulpit.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
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
Death is the dropping of the flower, that the fruit may swell.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
Religion is the whole soul marching heavenward to the music of joy and love, with well-ranked faculties, every one of them beating time and keeping tune.
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
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