American clergyman (1813-1887)
The law is a batter, which protects all that is behind it, but sweeps with destruction all that is outside.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
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Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
No people are so easy to govern as the intelligent, and none are so hard to govern as the ignorant.
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
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
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
Some critics, and for that matter most of them, I fear, rejoice in faults as buzzards do in carrion, to feed upon it; but a true critic is a surgeon, who cuts away the wen, or imposthume, that he may rejoice in the cleanness of a body restored to health.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
I am suspicious of that church whose members are one in their beliefs and opinions. When a tree is dead, it will lie any way; alive, it will have its own growth. When men's deadness is in the church, and their life elsewhere, all will be alike. They can be cut and polished any way. When they are alive, they are like a tropical forest--some shooting up, like the mahogany tree; some spreading, like the vine; some darkling, like the shrub; some lying, herb-like, on the ground; but all obeying their own laws of growth--a common law of growth variously expressed in each--and so contributing to the richness and beauty of the wood.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Perverted pride is a great misfortune in men; but pride in its original function, for which God created it, is indispensable to a proper manhood.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The soul is often hungrier than the body, and no shops can sell it food.
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
A week filled up with selfishness, and the Sabbath stuffed full of religious exercises, will make a good Pharisee, but a poor Christian. There are many persons who think Sunday is a sponge with which to wipe out the sins of the week. Now, God's altar stands from Sunday to Sunday, and the seventh day is no more for religion than any other. It is for rest. The whole seven are for religion, and one of them for rest.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
The mischiefs of anarchy have been equaled by the mischiefs of government.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
God makes the life fertile by disappointments, as he makes the ground fertile by frosts.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Sin is sweet in the mouth and bitter in digestion. It lies hard on the stomach.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
Men who act under dishonest passions are like men riding fierce horses: they cannot stop when they will, and they ride to ruin.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
A woman's pity often opens the door to love.
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