American clergyman (1813-1887)
Free speech is to a great people what winds are to oceans and malarial regions, which waft away the germs of disease, and bring new elements of health.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A lie is a very short wick in a very small lamp. The oil of reputation is very soon sucked up and gone. And just as soon as a man is known to lie, he is like a two-foot pump in a hundred-foot well. He cannot touch bottom at all.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
When our cup runs over, we let others drink the drops that fall, but not a drop from within the rim, and call it charity; when the crumbs are swept from our table, we think it generous to let the dogs eat them; as if that were charity which permits others to have what we cannot keep.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
God sends ten thousand truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing a while upon the roof and then fly away.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Royal Truths
When a man's pride is thoroughly subdued, it is like the sides of Mount Etna. It was terrible while the eruption lasted and the lava flowed; but when that is past, and the lava is turned into soil, it grows vineyards and olive trees up to the very top.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
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
Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Christianity is simply the ideal form of manhood represented to us by Jesus Christ.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Of all battles, there are none like the unrecorded battles of the soul.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
There are men who, supposing Providence to have an implacable spite against them, bemoan in the poverty of a wretched old age, the misfortunes of their lives. Luck forever ran against them, and for others; one, with a good profession, lost his luck in the river, where he idled away his time a-fishing, when he should have been in the office; another, with a good trade, perpetually burnt up his luck by his hot temper, which provoked all his employers to leave him; another, with a lucrative business, lost his luck by amazing diligence to everything but his business; and another, who steadily followed his trade, as steadily followed his bottle.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Twelve Lectures to Young Men
God builds for every sinner, if he will but come back, a highway of golden promises from the depths of degradation and sin clear up to the Father's house.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
You have seen a ship out on the bay, swinging with the tide, and seeming as if it would follow it; and yet it cannot, for down beneath the water it is anchored. So many a soul sways toward heaven, but cannot ascend thither, because it is anchored to some secret sin.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
If we are like Christ, we shall seek, not to absorb, but to reflect the light which falls upon others, and thus we shall become pure and spotless.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
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 book is a garden; a book is an orchard; a book is a storehouse; a book is a party. It is company by the way; it is a counselor; it is a multitude of counselors.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
That which men suppose the imagination to be, and to do, is often frivolous enough and mischievous enough; but that which God meant it to be in the mental economy is not merely noble, but supereminent. It is the distinguishing element in all refinement. It is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith. The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
The law is a batter, which protects all that is behind it, but sweeps with destruction all that is outside.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Beauty may be said to be God's trademark in creation.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Fear secretes acids.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts