Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

412 Sourced Quotes

Next to ingratitude the most painful thing to bear is gratitude.

Henry Ward Beecher
Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

Henry Ward Beecher
In this world, full often, our joys are only the tender shadows which our sorrows cast.

Henry Ward Beecher
We rejoice in God since he has taught us that every thing which is true in us, is but a faint expression of what is in him. And thus all our joys become to us the echo of higher joys, and our very life is as a dream of that nobler life, to which we shall awaken when we die.

Henry Ward Beecher
Whoever lives a noble life for Christ and God — he is one of God's workmen, working on that building of which God is the supreme Architect.

Henry Ward Beecher
Men are like trees: each one must put forth the leaf that is created in him.

Henry Ward Beecher
Tyrannies are overthrown by ideas. Armies are defeated by ideas. Nations, and Time itself, are overmatched by ideas.

Henry Ward Beecher
There never was a liar that had not a spot in him where he could not help admiring truth.

Henry Ward Beecher
The Bible is God's chart for you to steer by, to keep you from the bottom of the sea, and to show you where the harbor is, and how to reach it without running on rocks or bars.

Henry Ward Beecher
I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest who complained of bad luck.

Henry Ward Beecher
Though a man declares himself an atheist, it in no way alters his obligations.

Henry Ward Beecher
God washes the eyes by tears until they can behold the invisible land where tears shall come no more. O love! O affliction! ye are the guides that show us the way through the great airy space where our loved ones walked; and, as hounds easily follow the scent before the dew be risen, so God teaches us, while yet our sorrow is wet, to follow on and find our dear ones in heaven.

Henry Ward Beecher
There are many persons of combative tendencies, who read for ammunition, and dig out of the Bible iron for balls. They read, and they find nitre and charcoal and sulphur for powder. They read, and they find cannon. They read, and they make portholes and embrasures. And if a man does not believe as they do, they look upon him as an enemy, and let fly the Bible at him to demolish him. So men turn the word of God into a vast arsenal, filled with all manner of weapons, offensive and defensive.

Henry Ward Beecher
Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.

Henry Ward Beecher
Amid the discords of this life, it is blessed to think of heaven, where God draws after him an everlasting train of music; for all thoughts are harmonious and all feelings vocal, and so there is round about his feet eternal melody.

Henry Ward Beecher
A law is valuable not because it is law, but because there is right in it.

Henry Ward Beecher
God puts the excess of hope in one man, in order that it may be a medicine to the man who is despondent.

Henry Ward Beecher
If any of you should die today, could you say to God, "Lord, here is my life work. Thou didst send me into life with a handful of seeds, and here is my heart, like a garden, full of flowers?"

Henry Ward Beecher
You have seen a ship out on the bay, swinging with the tide, and seeming as if it would follow it; and yet it cannot, for down beneath the water it is anchored. So many a soul sways toward heaven, but cannot ascend thither, because it is anchored to some secret sin.

Henry Ward Beecher
In a great affliction there is no light either in the stars or in the sun; for when the inward light is fed with fragrant oil; there can be no darkness though the sun should go out. But when, like a sacred lamp in the temple, the inward light is quenched, there is no light outwardly, though a thousand suns should preside in the heavens.

Henry Ward Beecher
Our life is but a new form of the way men have lived from the beginning.

Henry Ward Beecher
All the sobriety which' religion needs or requires is that which real earnestness produces.

Henry Ward Beecher
The beginnings of moral enterprises in this world are never to be measured by any apparent growth.... At length comes the sudden ripeness and the full success, and he who is called in at the final moment deems this success his own. He is but the reaper and not the labourer. Other men sowed and tilled and he but enters into their labours.

Henry Ward Beecher
Not thine the sorrow, but ours, sainted soul! Thou hast indeed entered into the promised land, while we are yet on the march. To us remain the rocking of the deep, the storm upon the land, days of duty and nights of watching; but thou are sphered high above all darkness and fear, beyond all sorrow and weariness. Rest, oh, weary heart!

Henry Ward Beecher
Every green thing loves to die in bright colors. The vegetable cohorts march glowing out of the year in flaming dresses, as if to leave this earth were a triumph and not a sadness. It is never nature that is sad, but only we, that dare not look back on the past, and that have not its prophecy of the future in our bosoms.

Henry Ward Beecher