American clergyman (1813-1887)
The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Suffering well borne is better than suffering removed.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Pain is God's midwife, that helps some virtue into existence.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Spirituality without morality is rootless.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
Too much looking backward ... is bad for progress.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
The plainest row of books that cloth or paper ever covered is more significant of refinement than the most elaborately carved furniture.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Many men carry their religion as a church carries its bell--high up in a belfry, to ring out on sacred days, to strike for funerals, or to chime for weddings. All the rest of the time it hangs high above reach--voiceless, silent, dead.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
It is necessary, if one would read aright, that he should read at least two newspapers, representing both sides of important subjects.
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
Defeat is a school in which Truth always grows strong.
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
Very few men acquire wealth in such a manner as to receive pleasure from it. Just as long as there is the enthusiasm of the chase they enjoy it; but when they begin to look around, and think of settling down, they find that that part by which joy enters is dead in them. They have spent their lives in heaping up colossal piles of treasure, which stand, at the end, like the pyramids in the desert sands, holding only the dust of kings.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Unless you have singing in the family and singing in the house, singing everywhere, until it becomes a habit, you never can have congregational singing; it will be the cold drops, half water, half ice, which drip in March from some cleft of rock, one drop here and another there; whereas it should be like the August shower, which comes ten million drops at once, and roars on the roof.
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
Truths are first clouds, then rain, then harvests and food.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself.
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