American clergyman (1813-1887)
God sends experience to paint men's portraits.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Woman began at zero, and has through ages slowly unfolded and risen. Each age has protested against growth as unsexing woman.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
God is himself a vast medicine for man. It is the heart of God that carries restoration, inspiration, aspiration, and final victory.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A cunning man overreaches no one half so much as himself.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
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
Well-married, a man is winged--ill-matched, he is shackled.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
It is not well for a man to pray cream, and live skim milk.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Surely, of all things that are, snow is the most beautiful and the most feeble! Born of air-drops, less than the fallen dew, disorganized by a puff of warmth, driven everywhere by the least motion of the winds, each particle light and soft, and falling to the earth with such noiseless gentleness, that the wings of ten million times ten million makes no sound in the air, and the footfall of thrice as many makes no noise.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
attributed, Day's Collacon
What if the leaves were to fall a-weeping, and say, "It will be so painful for us to be pulled from our stalks, when autumn comes?" Foolish fear! Summer goes, and autumn succeeds. The glory of death is upon the leaves; and the gentlest breeze that blows takes them softly and silently from the bough, and they float slowly down, like fiery sparks, upon the moss.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
The soul is often hungrier than the body, and no shops can sell it food.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
There is no right more universal and more sacred, because lying so near the root of existence, than the right of men to their own labor.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
God washes the eyes by tears until they can behold the invisible land where tears shall come no more.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Earthly love is a brief and penurious stream, which only flows in spring, with a long summer drought. The change from a burning desert, treeless, springless, drear, to green fields and blooming orchards in June, is slight in comparison with that from the desert of this world's affection to the garden of God, where there is perpetual, tropical luxuriance of blessed love.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Wickedness goes to great lengths and depths where it is not checked and restrained by the free and continuous expression of the indignation of good men.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Like the emery and sand with which we scour off rude surfaces, evil and trouble in this world are but instruments. And they are in the hands of God.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
One of the affecting features in a life of vice is the longing, wistful outlooks given by the wretches who struggle with unbridled passions, towards virtues which are no longer within their reach. Men in the tide of vice are sometimes like the poor creatures swept down the stream of mighty rivers, who see people safe on shore, and trees, and flowers, as they go quickly past; and all things that are desirable gleam upon them for a moment to heighten their trouble, and to aggravate their swift-coming destruction.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
The beginning is the promise of the end.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
That man is a Christian whose soul has learned to love; and he who has not learned to love, does not know the alphabet of Christianity.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Men do not avail themselves of the riches of God's grace. They love to nurse their cares, and seem as uneasy without some fret, as an old friar would be without his hair girdle. They are commanded to cast their cares upon the Lord; but, even when they attempt it, they do not fail to catch them up again, and think it meritorious to walk burdened. They take God's ticket to heaven, and then put their baggage on their shoulders, and tramp, tramp, the whole way there afoot.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts