American clergyman (1813-1887)
A book is a garden; a book is an orchard; a book is a storehouse; a book is a party. It is company by the way; it is a counselor; it is a multitude of counselors.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A man's soul ought to be as the heavens were on the night when the shepherds looked up, and saw them full of angels as well as stars.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Fear secretes acids.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
God's nature is medicinal to ours. There are no troubles which befall our suffering hearts, for which there is not in God a remedy, if only we rise to receive it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Royal Truths
When a man's pride is thoroughly subdued, it is like the sides of Mount Etna. It was terrible while the eruption lasted and the lava flowed; but when that is past, and the lava is turned into soil, it grows vineyards and olive trees up to the very top.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
God designed men to grow as trees grow in open pastures, full-boughed all around; but men in society grow like trees in forests, tall and spindling, the lower ones overshadowed by the higher, with only a little branching, and that at the top. They borrow of each other the power to stand; and if the forest be cleared, and one be left alone, the first wind which comes uproots it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Nobody ever sees truth except in fragments.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The call to religion is not a call to be better than your fellows, but to be better than yourself. Religion is relative to the individual.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
The mind has no kitchen to do its dirty work in while the parlor remains clean.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
When our cup runs over, we let others drink the drops that fall, but not a drop from within the rim, and call it charity; when the crumbs are swept from our table, we think it generous to let the dogs eat them; as if that were charity which permits others to have what we cannot keep.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
As long as society is absolutely divided as milk is, the cream being at the top and the impoverished milk at the bottom, so long will society be unbalanced, and liable to be thrown into convulsions out of which will spring wars. A circulation throughout keeps it in health.
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
Men go shopping just as men go out fishing or hunting, to see how large a fish may be caught with the smallest hook.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Spreading Christianity abroad is sometimes an excuse for not having it at home.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
A man never has good luck who has a bad wife.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Twelve Lectures to Young Men
Every thought and feeling is a painting stroke, in the darkness, of our likeness that is to be; and our whole life is but a chamber, which we are frescoing with colors that do not appear while being laid on wet, but which will shine forth afterwards, when finished and dry.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
There are multitudes of persons whose idea of liberty is the right to do what they please, instead of the right of doing that which is lawful and best.
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 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