HENRY WARD BEECHER QUOTES VI

American clergyman (1813-1887)

When we have heartily repented of a wrong, we should let all the waves of forgetfulness roll over it, and go forward unburdened to meet the future.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Our life is but a new form of the way men have lived from the beginning.

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


The law is a batter, which protects all that is behind it, but sweeps with destruction all that is outside.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


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


Riches are not an end of life but an instrument of life.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Wherever you have seen God pass, mark that spot, and go and sit in that window again.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Repentance is the turning of the soul from the way of midnight to the point of the coming sun.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


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


We need not fear shipwreck when God is the pilot.

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


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


Spreading Christianity abroad is sometimes an excuse for not having it at home.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


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

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


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


Little lies are very dangerous, because there are so many of them, and because each one of them scours upon the character as diamond-pointed.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Love is ownership. We own whom we love. The universe is God's because he loves.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


The beginning is the promise of the end.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Words are but the bannerets of a great army, a few bits of waving color here and there; thoughts are the main body of the footman that march unseen below.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


The way to begin a Christian life is not to study theology. Piety before theology. Right living will produce right thinking. Yet many men, when their consciences are aroused, run for catechisms, and commentaries, and systems. They do not mean to be shallow Christians. They intend to be thorough, if they enter upon the Christian life at all. Now, theologies are well in their place; but repentance and love must come before all other experiences. First a cure for your sin-sick soul, and then theologies. Suppose a man were taken with the cholera, and, instead of sending for a physician, he should send to a bookstore, and buy all the books which have been written on the human system, and, while the disease was working in his vitals, he should say, "I'll not put myself in the hands of any of these doctors. I shall probe this thing to the bottom." Would it not be better for him first to be cured of the cholera?

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts