American clergyman (1813-1887)
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
Patriotism, in our day, is made to be an argument for all public wrong, and all private meanness. For the sake of country a man is told to yield every thing that makes the land honorable. For the sake of country a man must submit to every ignominy that will lead to the ruin of the state through disgrace of the citizen. There never was a man so unpatriotic as Christ was. Old Jerusalem ought to have been everything to him. The laws and institutions of his country ought to have been more to him than all the men in his country. They were not, and the Jews hated him; but the common people, like the ocean waters, moved in tides towards his heavenly attraction wherever he went.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Surely, of all things that are, snow is the most beautiful and the most feeble! Born of air-drops, less than the fallen dew, disorganized by a puff of warmth, driven everywhere by the least motion of the winds, each particle light and soft, and falling to the earth with such noiseless gentleness, that the wings of ten million times ten million makes no sound in the air, and the footfall of thrice as many makes no noise.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Like the emery and sand with which we scour off rude surfaces, evil and trouble in this world are but instruments. And they are in the hands of God.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
It is defeat that turns bone to flint, gristle to muscle, and makes men invincible.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
In friendship your heart is like a bell struck every time your friend is in trouble.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Ambition is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
That energy which makes a child hard to manage is the energy which afterward makes him a manager of life.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Sorrows bring us closer to God than joys.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Men's graces must get the better of their faults as a farmer's crops do of the weeds--by growth. When the corn is low, the farmer uses the plough to root up the weeds; but when it is high, and shakes its palm-like leaves in the wind, he says, "Let the corn take care of them," for the dense shadow of growing corn is as fatal to weeds as the edge of the sickle.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Earthly love is a brief and penurious stream, which only flows in spring, with a long summer drought. The change from a burning desert, treeless, springless, drear, to green fields and blooming orchards in June, is slight in comparison with that from the desert of this world's affection to the garden of God, where there is perpetual, tropical luxuriance of blessed love.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
A traitor is good fruit to hang from the boughs of the tree of liberty.
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
A man without a vote ... is like a man without a hand.
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
There are crimes that, like frost on flowers, in one single night destroy character and reputation.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
God washes the eyes by tears until they can behold the invisible land where tears shall come no more.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Men might spin, and churn, and knit, and sew, and cook, and rock the cradel for a hundred generations, and not be women. And woman will not become man by external occupations. God's colors do not wash out: sex is dyed in the wool.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
It is not well for a man to pray cream, and live skim milk.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts