American clergyman (1813-1887)
Men never _make_ truths; they only recognize the value of this currency of God. They find truths, as men sometimes find bills, in the street, and only recognize the value of that which other persons have drawn.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Poverty is very good in poems ... in maxims and in sermons, but it is very bad in practical life.
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
Suffering is as God's letter. Open it and read it. Many a one will find that he is titled, or that there is an inheritance laid up for him.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Temptations are enemies outside the castle seeking entrance. If there be no false retainer within who holds treacherous parley, there can scarcely be even an offer.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The Church is not a gallery for the better exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
There are many Christians who like, about once in twelve months, to have a good revival in their hearts. They think that, like the year, they can make up for freezing and snowing all winter by a period of intense heat in the summer. The remedy for such is not to chill the revivals, but to shorten the intervals between them, and to endeavor to make their life equatorial and tropical all the year round.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
There is no harder shield for the devil to pierce with temptation than singing with prayer.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A lie always needs a truth for a handle to it. The worst lies are those whose blade is false, but whose handle is true.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A man ought to carry himself in the world as an orange tree would if it could walk up and down in the garden--swinging perfume from every little censer it holds up to the air.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Newspapers are the schoolmasters of the common people.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
No man ever grows to a full man's estate without the ministration of suffering.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Our moral faculties must be placed highest, else they can no more flourish than could a plant growing under the shade and drip of trees.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
When a church is faithless to its duties, the real church is outside its walls, in the community.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
A rule is like a mold; you pour in the wax, and when it is pressed, it comes out, and the mold is left behind.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Every time your enemy fires a curse, you must fire a blessing, and so you are to bombard back and forth with this kind of artillery. The mother grace of all the graces is Christian good-will.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Joy is more divine than sorrow; for joy is bread, and sorrow is medicine.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Success is full of promise till men get it; and then it is a last year's nest, from which the bird has flown.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Worry is rust upon the blade.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
A man in old age is like a sword in a shop window. Men that look upon the perfect blade do not imagine the process by which it was completed.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts