American clergyman (1813-1887)
Men judge of Christians by taking as fair samples those that lie rotten on the ground.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The religion of Jesus Christ is not ascetic, nor sour, nor gloomy, nor circumscribing. It is full of sweetness in the present and in promise.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Man's faults lie like reptiles--like toads, like lizards, like serpents; and what if there is over them the evening sky, lit with glory, and all aglow? Are they less reptiles and toads because all is roseate around about them?
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A man in old age is like a sword in a shop window. Men that look upon the perfect blade do not imagine the process by which it was completed.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
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
Love, in this world, is like a seed taken from the tropics, and planted where the winter comes too soon; and it cannot spread itself in flower-clusters and wide-twining vines, so that the whole air is filled with the perfume thereof. But there is to be another summer for it yet. Care for the root now, and God will care for the top by and by.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Men utter a vast amount of slander against their physical nature, and attempt to repair deficient virtue by maiming their animal passions. These are to be trained, guided, restrained, but never crucified or exterminated, for they are the soil in which we were planted.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Next to victory, there is nothing so sweet as defeat, if only the right adversary overcomes you.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Money in the hands of one or two men is like a dungheap in a barnyard. So long as it lies in a mass, it does no good; but, if it is only spread out evenly on the land, everything will grow.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Many yet are the secret truths of God which will be unfolded as they are needed.
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
Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The greatest architect and the one most needed is Hope.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Success is full of promise till men get it; and then it is a last year's nest, from which the bird has flown.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
We rejoice in God since he has taught us that every thing which is true in us, is but a faint expression of what is in him. And thus all our joys become to us the echo of higher joys, and our very life is as a dream of that nobler life, to which we shall awaken when we die.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
It is not when the cable lies coiled up on the deck that you know how strong or how weak it is; it is when it is put to the test.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The Church is not a gallery for the better exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
We are but a point, a single comma, and God is the literature of eternity.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
Every artist dips his brush in his own soul and paints his own nature into his pictures.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit