HENRY WARD BEECHER QUOTES XVI

American clergyman (1813-1887)

If any man is rich and powerful, he comes under that law of God by which the higher branches must take the burnings of the sun, and shade those that are lower; by which the tall trees must protect the weak plants beneath them.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Love, in this world, is like a seed taken from the tropics, and planted where the winter comes too soon; and it cannot spread itself in flower-clusters and wide-twining vines, so that the whole air is filled with the perfume thereof. But there is to be another summer for it yet. Care for the root now, and God will care for the top by and by.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Birds finish the nest with their own breast, so it is the bosom that makes the home, and not the bill or the claw.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


A man that has lost moral sense is like a man in battle with both of his legs shot off: he has nothing to stand on.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Christians ought not to slander God by looking as if they were at an everlasting funeral.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Christians are like vases, they must pass through the fire ere they can shine. The graces which are to be their everlasting beauty and glory must be burned in.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


No man ever grows to a full man's estate without the ministration of suffering.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


We have the promises of God as thick as daisies in summer meadows, that death, which men most fear, shall be to us the most blessed of experiences, if we trust in him. Death is unclasping; joy, breaking out in the desert; the heart, come to its blossoming time! Do we call it dying when the bud bursts into flower?

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Christians! It is your duty not only to be good, but to shine; and, of all the lights which you kindle on the face, Joy will reach farthest out to sea, where troubled mariners are seeking the shore.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


A rule is like a mold; you pour in the wax, and when it is pressed, it comes out, and the mold is left behind.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


As the cream abandons the milk from which it took its life, and rises to the top and rides there, so men, because they are richer than those around about them, separate themselves, and all mankind below them they regard as skim milk.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Poverty is never by the grace of God in the estimation of a New-Englander. It comes to him by post from the other direction.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


We never know the love of our parents for us till we have become parents.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


A babe is nothing but a bundle of possibilities.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Where human life needs most sympathy, where usually it is the most barren, there it is that Christ is more likely to be found than anywhere else.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Grace is only nature blossomed out; nature won and warmed into its true growth.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


It is only God who can satisfy the soul.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Nothing goes far which has not the wings of love to make it buoyant, so that it can fly.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Love is the wine of existence. When you have taken that, you have taken the most precious drop that there is in the cluster.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


A man in old age is like a sword in a shop window. Men that look upon the perfect blade do not imagine the process by which it was completed.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts