HENRY WARD BEECHER QUOTES VII

American clergyman (1813-1887)

The grossest, the cruelest, the most selfish, the most easily pervertible and perverted thing in this world, is government.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Perverted pride is a great misfortune in men; but pride in its original function, for which God created it, is indispensable to a proper manhood.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


In America there is not one single element of civilization that is not made to depend, in the end, upon public opinion.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


We sleep, but the loom of life never stops; and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up tomorrow.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


We need not fear shipwreck when God is the pilot.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


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 no servant like God. No other being so humbles himself, and so bows down under weakness, and so lifts up with his strength, as God in the plenary service of Love.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


There are not anywhere else so many ways of trickery, so many false lights, so many veils, so many guises, so many illusive deceits, as are practiced in every man's conscience in respect to his motives, thoughts, feelings, conduct, and character.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Some critics, and for that matter most of them, I fear, rejoice in faults as buzzards do in carrion, to feed upon it; but a true critic is a surgeon, who cuts away the wen, or imposthume, that he may rejoice in the cleanness of a body restored to health.

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


A man never has good luck who has a bad wife.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Twelve Lectures to Young Men


A law is valuable, not because it is a law, but because there is right in it.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Truth is the bread of a noble manhood.

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


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


I am suspicious of that church whose members are one in their beliefs and opinions. When a tree is dead, it will lie any way; alive, it will have its own growth. When men's deadness is in the church, and their life elsewhere, all will be alike. They can be cut and polished any way. When they are alive, they are like a tropical forest--some shooting up, like the mahogany tree; some spreading, like the vine; some darkling, like the shrub; some lying, herb-like, on the ground; but all obeying their own laws of growth--a common law of growth variously expressed in each--and so contributing to the richness and beauty of the wood.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


An ambition which has conscience in it will always be a laborious and faithful engineer, and will build the road, and bridge the chasms between itself and eminent success by the most faithful and minute performances of duty.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts