HENRY WARD BEECHER QUOTES XVII

American clergyman (1813-1887)

A rule is like a mold; you pour in the wax, and when it is pressed, it comes out, and the mold is left behind.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Christians should be like a flower store: the odor of sanctity should betray them wherever they are.

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


Love is the wine of existence. When you have taken that, you have taken the most precious drop that there is in the cluster.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Men judge of Christians by taking as fair samples those that lie rotten on the ground.

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


The greatest architect and the one most needed is Hope.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Troubles come to us like mire and filth; but, when mingled with the soil, they change to flower and fruit.

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


Death is the Christian's vacation morning. School is out. It is time to go home.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


It is the sum of the million little unconscious dispositions that go to make life joyful or painful.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


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


We are but a point, a single comma, and God is the literature of eternity.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Blessed are the happiness-makers! Blessed are they that take away attritions, that remove friction, that make the courses of life smooth, and the intercourse of men gentle!

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages.

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


There ought to be such an atmosphere in every Christian church, that a man going there and sitting two hours should take the contagion of heaven, and carry home a fire to kindle the altar whence he came.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


When a church is faithless to its duties, the real church is outside its walls, in the community.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


If one could wallow amid filth for half a life and then wash himself clean in a day, then sin would be no worse than dirt on the hands which water can cleanse in a minute. Repentance may begin instantly, but reformation often requires a sphere of years.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Laws and institutions are constantly tending to gravitate. Like clocks, they must be occasionally cleansed, and wound up, and set to true time.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts