American clergyman (1813-1887)
The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Pain is God's midwife, that helps some virtue into existence.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Suffering well borne is better than suffering removed.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
A man can no more make money suddenly and largely, and be unharmed by it, than one could suddenly grow from a child's stature to a man's without harm.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Too much looking backward ... is bad for progress.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Defeat is a school in which Truth always grows strong.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
That state of mind in which a man is impressed with invisible things is faith.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Not to fear where there is occasion, is as great a weakness as to fear unduly, without reason.... Fear is a kind of bell, or gong, which rings the mind into quick life and avoidance upon the approach of danger.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Some folks think that Christianity means a kind of insurance policy, and that it has little to do with this life, but that it is a very good thing when a man dies.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Spirituality without morality is rootless.
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
Truths are first clouds, then rain, then harvests and food.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Unfruitful emotion is to be suspected. Feeling acts as an impulse, as a spur, as a spring, and when feelings are excited, and they put nothing forward, they are sometimes even dangerous to a man.
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
Adversity is the mint in which God stamps upon man his image and superscription.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Good men's prayers are carried by the angelic mail; but many men's prayers evidently go by the demoniac route. They are never so bad as after they have prayed.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Home should be an oratorio of the memory, singing to all our after life melodies and harmonies of old remembered joy.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
If you are idle, you are on the road to ruin; and there are few stopping places upon it. It is rather a precipice than a road.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Lectures to Young Men on Various Important Subjects
It is not desirable that we should live as in the constant atmosphere and presence of death; that would unfit us for life; but it is well for us, now and then, to talk with death as friend talketh with friend, and to bathe in the strange seas, and to anticipate the experiences of that land to which it will lead us. These forethinkings are meant, not to make us discontented with life, but to bring us back with more strength, and a nobler purpose in living.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
It makes a great deal of difference what sort of God men believe in.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit