HENRY WARD BEECHER QUOTES XIV

American clergyman (1813-1887)

Where human life needs most sympathy, where usually it is the most barren, there it is that Christ is more likely to be found than anywhere else.

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


Faith is a recognition of those things which are above the senses.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Faith is the realization of an invisible truth.

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


Adversity is the mint in which God stamps upon man his image and superscription.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


No man knows what he will do till the right temptation comes.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


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


Liberty is the soul's right to breathe, and when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


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


When there is love in the heart, there are rainbows in the eyes, which cover every black cloud with gorgeous hues.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


We have the promises of God as thick as daisies in summer meadows, that death, which men most fear, shall be to us the most blessed of experiences, if we trust in him. Death is unclasping; joy, breaking out in the desert; the heart, come to its blossoming time! Do we call it dying when the bud bursts into flower?

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


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

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Do not be troubled because you have not great virtues. God made a million spears of grass where he made one tree. The earth is fringed and carpeted, not with forests, but with grasses. Only have enough of little virtues and common fidelities, and you need not mourn because you are neither a hero nor a saint.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


It is not desirable that we should live as in the constant atmosphere and presence of death; that would unfit us for life; but it is well for us, now and then, to talk with death as friend talketh with friend, and to bathe in the strange seas, and to anticipate the experiences of that land to which it will lead us. These forethinkings are meant, not to make us discontented with life, but to bring us back with more strength, and a nobler purpose in living.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


It is not when the cable lies coiled up on the deck that you know how strong or how weak it is; it is when it is put to the test.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


A childless man is like a loose engine in a ship. A man must be bolted and screwed to the community before he can work well for its advancement; and there are no such screws and bolts as children.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


The church is no more religion than the masonry of the aqueduct is the water that flows through it.

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