HENRY WARD BEECHER QUOTES VII

American clergyman (1813-1887)

Nobody ever sees truth except in fragments.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


There is no servant like God. No other being so humbles himself, and so bows down under weakness, and so lifts up with his strength, as God in the plenary service of Love.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


There are not anywhere else so many ways of trickery, so many false lights, so many veils, so many guises, so many illusive deceits, as are practiced in every man's conscience in respect to his motives, thoughts, feelings, conduct, and character.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Spreading Christianity abroad is sometimes an excuse for not having it at home.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


As the imagination is set to look into the invisible and immaterial, it seems to attract something of their vitality; and though it can give nothing to the body to redeem it from years, it can give to the soul that freshness of youth in old age which is even more beautiful than youth in the young.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


An ambition which has conscience in it will always be a laborious and faithful engineer, and will build the road, and bridge the chasms between itself and eminent success by the most faithful and minute performances of duty.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Love is ownership. We own whom we love. The universe is God's because he loves.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Repentance is the turning of the soul from the way of midnight to the point of the coming sun.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


God makes the life fertile by disappointments, as he makes the ground fertile by frosts.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Sin is sweet in the mouth and bitter in digestion. It lies hard on the stomach.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Blessed be the man whose work drives him. Something must drive men; and if it is wholesome industry, they have no time for a thousand torments and temptations.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness, and blind to light, mousing for vermin, and never seeing noble game.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Faith means a sanctified imagination, or the imagination applied to spiritual things.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


A man never has good luck who has a bad wife.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Twelve Lectures to Young Men


A lie always needs a truth for a handle to it, else the hand would cut itself which sought to drive it home upon another. The worst lies, therefore, are those whose blade is false, but whose handle is true.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Amid the discords of this life, it is blessed to think of heaven, where God draws after him an everlasting train of music; for all thoughts are harmonious and all feelings vocal, and so there is round about his feet eternal melody.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


I am suspicious of that church whose members are one in their beliefs and opinions. When a tree is dead, it will lie any way; alive, it will have its own growth. When men's deadness is in the church, and their life elsewhere, all will be alike. They can be cut and polished any way. When they are alive, they are like a tropical forest--some shooting up, like the mahogany tree; some spreading, like the vine; some darkling, like the shrub; some lying, herb-like, on the ground; but all obeying their own laws of growth--a common law of growth variously expressed in each--and so contributing to the richness and beauty of the wood.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


The mischiefs of anarchy have been equaled by the mischiefs of government.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


God's hand, like a sign-board, is pointing toward democracy, and saying to the nations of the earth, "This is the way: walk ye in it."

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit