HENRY WARD BEECHER QUOTES VIII

American clergyman (1813-1887)

A man that does nothing but watch evil, never will overcome it.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


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


There is not on earth so base a knave as the man who wins the love of a woman when he knows that he cannot or ought not to requite it.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


There is in youth a purity of character which, when once touched and defiled, can never be restored; a fringe more delicate than frost-work, and which, when torn and broken, can never be re-embroidered.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


The soul is often hungrier than the body, and no shops can sell it food.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Riches are not an end of life but an instrument of life.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Our earthly loves are but so many silver steps leading us up to the great golden love of God.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Men's graces must get the better of their faults as a farmer's crops do of the weeds--by growth. When the corn is low, the farmer uses the plough to root up the weeds; but when it is high, and shakes its palm-like leaves in the wind, he says, "Let the corn take care of them," for the dense shadow of growing corn is as fatal to weeds as the edge of the sickle.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Laws are not masters but servants, and he rules them who obeys them.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


It takes a man to make a devil.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


God designed men to grow as trees grow in open pastures, full-boughed all around; but men in society grow like trees in forests, tall and spindling, the lower ones overshadowed by the higher, with only a little branching, and that at the top. They borrow of each other the power to stand; and if the forest be cleared, and one be left alone, the first wind which comes uproots it.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


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


A man's soul ought to be as the heavens were on the night when the shepherds looked up, and saw them full of angels as well as stars.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


A man without a vote ... is like a man without a hand.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


The poor man with industry is happier than the rich man in idleness.

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


The beginning is the promise of the end.

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


Patriotism, in our day, is made to be an argument for all public wrong, and all private meanness. For the sake of country a man is told to yield every thing that makes the land honorable. For the sake of country a man must submit to every ignominy that will lead to the ruin of the state through disgrace of the citizen. There never was a man so unpatriotic as Christ was. Old Jerusalem ought to have been everything to him. The laws and institutions of his country ought to have been more to him than all the men in his country. They were not, and the Jews hated him; but the common people, like the ocean waters, moved in tides towards his heavenly attraction wherever he went.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts