American clergyman (1813-1887)
Men who stand on any other foundation than the rock Christ Jesus are like birds that build in trees by the side of rivers. The bird sings in the branches, and the river sings below, but all the while the waters are undermining the soil about the roots, till, in some unsuspected hour, the tree falls with a crash into the stream; and then its nest is sunk, its home is gone, and the bird is a wanderer.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
A man has a right to picture God according to his need, whatever it be.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Do not be troubled because you have not great virtues. God made a million spears of grass where he made one tree. The earth is fringed and carpeted, not with forests, but with grasses. Only have enough of little virtues and common fidelities, and you need not mourn because you are neither a hero nor a saint.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Liberty is the soul's right to breathe, and when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
You cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are indispensable to the rich.
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
God's whole nature moves toward the man who wants to be free from sin, as broadly and irresistibly as the summer moves from the south toward the north.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Christians are like vases, they must pass through the fire ere they can shine. The graces which are to be their everlasting beauty and glory must be burned in.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Christians! It is your duty not only to be good, but to shine; and, of all the lights which you kindle on the face, Joy will reach farthest out to sea, where troubled mariners are seeking the shore.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Truths are first clouds, then rain, then harvests and food.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without in himself.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Wealth in activity--capital with all its friction--is far safer than invested wealth lying dead.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Some men want to have religion like a dark lantern, and carry it in their pocket, where nobody but themselves can get any good from it.
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
Many people keep their old sins warm while they go to try on virtue and see if they like it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
When leisure is a selfish luxury, its very activity, when it stirs, is apt to be only a kind of indolence taking exercise, that it may the better digest its selfishness.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. If you are angry with a man, or hate him, it is not hard to go to him and stab him with words; but so to love a man that you cannot bear to see the stain of sin upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words--that is friendship. But few have such friends. Our enemies usually teach us what we are, at the point of the sword.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Heaven will be inherited by every man who has heaven in his soul.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
There are many Christians who like, about once in twelve months, to have a good revival in their hearts. They think that, like the year, they can make up for freezing and snowing all winter by a period of intense heat in the summer. The remedy for such is not to chill the revivals, but to shorten the intervals between them, and to endeavor to make their life equatorial and tropical all the year round.
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