American clergyman (1813-1887)
When a man says that he is perfect already, there is only one of two places for him, and that is heaven or the lunatic asylum.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
We need not fear shipwreck when God is the pilot.
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
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
Indifference in religion is more fatal than skepticism. There is no pulse in indifference; skepticism may have warm blood.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Wealth held by a class and used ambitiously becomes as despotic as an absolute monarchy, and has in its hands manners, customs, laws, institutions, and governments themselves.
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
It is often said it is no matter what a man believes if he is only sincere. This is true of all minor truths, and false of all truths whose nature it is to fashion a man's life. It will make no difference in a man's harvest whether he thinks turnips have more saccharine matter than potatoes--whether corn is better than wheat. But let the man sincerely believe that seed planted without ploughing is as good as with, that January is as favorable for seed sowing as April, and that cockle seed will produce as good a harvest as wheat, and will it make no difference?
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
God makes the life fertile by disappointments, as he makes the ground fertile by frosts.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Truth is the bread of a noble manhood.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The mischiefs of anarchy have been equaled by the mischiefs of government.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The beginning is the promise of the end.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Some plants of the bitterest root have the whitest and sweetest blossoms; so the bitterest wrong has the sweetest repentance.
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
Love is ownership. We own whom we love. The universe is God's because he loves.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
A lie always needs a truth for a handle to it, else the hand would cut itself which sought to drive it home upon another. The worst lies, therefore, are those whose blade is false, but whose handle is true.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
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
The divine qualities of man are but the slightest hints, the faintest intimations, of the attributes of God.
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
One might as well attempt to calculate mathematically the contingent forms of the tinkling bits of glass in a kaleidoscope as to look through the tube of the future and foretell its pattern.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts