HENRY WARD BEECHER QUOTES XVI

American clergyman (1813-1887)

How many there are that spend their lives in the midst of all the pleasing trifles of that vast museum of curiosities which are labeled religious, and think themselves Christians!

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Righteousness is as hereditary as vice, and godly men transmit moral qualities to their children, and to their children's children.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Heaven answers with us the same purpose that the tuning-fork does with musicians. Our affections, the whole orchestra of them, are apt to get below the concert-pitch; and we take heaven to tune our hearts by.

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


Many men carry their conscience like a drawn sword, cutting this way and that, in the world, but sheathe it, and keep it very soft and quiet, when it is turned within, thinking that a sword should not be allowed to cut its own scabbard.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


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


The great men of earth are the shadowy men, who, having lived and died, now live again and forever through their undying thoughts.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


You cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are indispensable to the rich.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


As the cream abandons the milk from which it took its life, and rises to the top and rides there, so men, because they are richer than those around about them, separate themselves, and all mankind below them they regard as skim milk.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


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


Truths are first clouds, then rain, then harvests and food.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


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


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


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

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


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


A man that has lost moral sense is like a man in battle with both of his legs shot off: he has nothing to stand on.

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


The greatest architect and the one most needed is Hope.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


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