American clergyman (1813-1887)
Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
There is an ugly kind of forgiveness in this world--a kind of hedgehog forgiveness, shot out like quills.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. If you are angry with a man, or hate him, it is not hard to go to him and stab him with words; but so to love a man that you cannot bear to see the stain of sin upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words--that is friendship. But few have such friends. Our enemies usually teach us what we are, at the point of the sword.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
If any man is rich and powerful, he comes under that law of God by which the higher branches must take the burnings of the sun, and shade those that are lower; by which the tall trees must protect the weak plants beneath them.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Many professed Christians are like railroad station houses, and the wicked are whirled indifferently by them, and go on their way forgetting them; whereas they should be like switches, taking sinners off one track, and putting them on to another.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
If one could wallow amid filth for half a life and then wash himself clean in a day, then sin would be no worse than dirt on the hands which water can cleanse in a minute. Repentance may begin instantly, but reformation often requires a sphere of years.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
What are called "fanatics" and "extremists" are only the men that God sends to make up the general average which the unfaithfulness of others lowers.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
It is the sum of the million little unconscious dispositions that go to make life joyful or painful.
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
Life is full of amusement to an amusing man.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A man has a right to picture God according to his need, whatever it be.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Love is the wine of existence. When you have taken that, you have taken the most precious drop that there is in the cluster.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
There is but one resource for innocence among men or women, and that is an embargo upon all commerce of bad men.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Every artist dips his brush in his own soul and paints his own nature into his pictures.
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
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
Men judge of Christians by taking as fair samples those that lie rotten on the ground.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
Some men want to have religion like a dark lantern, and carry it in their pocket, where nobody but themselves can get any good from it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
No man rides so high and in such good company as the man that allies himself to a truth.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit