American clergyman (1813-1887)
Spirituality without morality is rootless.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
It is necessary, if one would read aright, that he should read at least two newspapers, representing both sides of important subjects.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Home should be an oratorio of the memory, singing to all our after life melodies and harmonies of old remembered joy.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
That state of mind in which a man is impressed with invisible things is faith.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Doctrine is nothing but the skin of truth set up and stuffed.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Some folks think that Christianity means a kind of insurance policy, and that it has little to do with this life, but that it is a very good thing when a man dies.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Too much looking backward ... is bad for progress.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Unfruitful emotion is to be suspected. Feeling acts as an impulse, as a spur, as a spring, and when feelings are excited, and they put nothing forward, they are sometimes even dangerous to a man.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Very few men acquire wealth in such a manner as to receive pleasure from it. Just as long as there is the enthusiasm of the chase they enjoy it; but when they begin to look around, and think of settling down, they find that that part by which joy enters is dead in them. They have spent their lives in heaping up colossal piles of treasure, which stand, at the end, like the pyramids in the desert sands, holding only the dust of kings.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Pain is God's midwife, that helps some virtue into existence.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Nothing goes far which has not the wings of love to make it buoyant, so that it can fly.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Selfishness at the expense of others' happiness is demonism.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Good men's prayers are carried by the angelic mail; but many men's prayers evidently go by the demoniac route. They are never so bad as after they have prayed.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Memory can glean, but can never renew. It brings us joys faint as is the perfume of the flowers, faded and dried, of the summer that is gone.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
The path of the sinner back to God is brighter and brighter all the way up to the smile of the face and the touch of the hand; and that is salvation.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Not to fear where there is occasion, is as great a weakness as to fear unduly, without reason.... Fear is a kind of bell, or gong, which rings the mind into quick life and avoidance upon the approach of danger.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Suffering well borne is better than suffering removed.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Men often abstain from the grosser vices as too coarse and common for their appetites, while the vices which are frosted and ornamented are served up to them as delicacies.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Nothing in this world requires such long seasoning and ripening as new thoughts.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit