American clergyman (1813-1887)
The Divine Being brings comfort and consolation to men. He is a God for men that are weak, and want to be strong; for men that are impure, and want to be pure; for men that are unjust, and want to be just; for men that are unloving, and want to be loving; for men that aspire to all the greatness and glory of which the soul is capable.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Hope is sweet-minded and sweet-eyed. It draws pictures; it weaves fancies; it fills the future with delight.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
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
Poverty is never by the grace of God in the estimation of a New-Englander. It comes to him by post from the other direction.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Men never _make_ truths; they only recognize the value of this currency of God. They find truths, as men sometimes find bills, in the street, and only recognize the value of that which other persons have drawn.
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
A man whose religion is dominated by overhanging gloom or fear misrepresents religion as much as a cloudy day would misrepresent a sunshiny day, or as much as January would misrepresent June.
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
Joy is more divine than sorrow; for joy is bread, and sorrow is medicine.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The greatest architect and the one most needed is Hope.
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
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
Every city should make the common school so rich, so large, so ample, so beautiful in its endowments, and so fruitful in its results, that a private school will not be able to live under the drip of it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A man ought to carry himself in the world as an orange tree would if it could walk up and down in the garden--swinging perfume from every little censer it holds up to the air.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
It is one of the worst effects of prosperity to make a man a vortex instead of a fountain; so that, instead of throwing out, he learns only to draw in.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Heaven will be inherited by every man who has heaven in his soul.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Suffering is as God's letter. Open it and read it. Many a one will find that he is titled, or that there is an inheritance laid up for him.
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
The fugitive, brief, though intense satisfactions that come to the nerves through the appetite and passions are not the foundations of joy in this world: they come with a moment's flash, and are disastrous in their flight.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit