Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

415 Sourced Quotes

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
Oftentimes great and open temptations are the most harmless because they come with banners flying and bands playing and all the munitions of war in full view, so that we know we are in the midst of enemies that mean us damage, and we get ready to meet and resist them. Our peculiar dangers are those that surprise us and work treachery in our fort.

Henry Ward Beecher
True politeness is the spirit of benevolence showing itself in a refined way. It is the expression of good-will and kindness. It promotes both beauty in the man who possesses it, and happiness in those who are about him. It is a religious duty, and should be a part of religious training.

Henry Ward Beecher
He that does not know how wisely to meddle with public affairs in preaching the gospel, does not know how to preach the gospel.

Henry Ward Beecher
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
Reason is a permanent blessing of God to the soul. Without it there can be no large religion.

Henry Ward Beecher
If there be any one whose power is in beauty, in purity, in goodness, it is a woman.

Henry Ward Beecher
Brethren, we are all sailing home; and by and by, when we are not thinking of it, some shadowy thing (men call it death), at midnight, will pass by, and will call us by name, and will say, "I have a message for you from home; God wants you; heaven waits for you.

Henry Ward Beecher
There is no man that lives who does not need to be drilled, disciplined, and developed into something higher and nobler and better than he is by nature. Life is one prolonged birth.

Henry Ward Beecher
Leaves die, but trees do not. They only undress.

Henry Ward Beecher
Religion would save a man; Christ would make him worth saving.

Henry Ward Beecher
There have been many men who left behind them that which hundreds of years have not worn out. The earth has Socrates and Plato to this day. The world is richer yet by Moses and the old prophets than by the wisest statesmen. We are indebted to the past. We stand in the greatness of ages that are gone rather than in that of our own. But of how many of us shall it be said that, being dead, we yet speak?

Henry Ward Beecher
Not that which men do worthily, but that which they do successfully, is what history makes haste to record.

Henry Ward Beecher
A man has a right to picture God according to his need, whatever it be.

Henry Ward Beecher
What place is so rugged and so homely that there is no beauty; if you only have a sensibility to beauty?

Henry Ward Beecher
I used to think the Lord's Prayer was a short prayer; but as I live longer, and see more of life, I begin to believe there is no such thing as getting through it. If a man, in praying that prayer, were to be stopped by every word until he had thoroughly prayed it, it would take him a lifetime.

Henry Ward Beecher
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
Christ certainly did come to destroy the law and the prophets.

Henry Ward Beecher
The hunger of the eye is not to be despised; and they are to be pitied who have starvation of the eye.

Henry Ward Beecher
God wishes to exhaust all means of kindness before His hand takes hold on justice.

Henry Ward Beecher
Some of God's noblest sons, I think, will be selected from those that know how to take wealth, with all its temptations, and maintain godliness therewith. It is hard to be a saint standing in a golden niche.

Henry Ward Beecher
Some men are like pyramids, which are very broad where they touch the ground, but grow narrow as they reach the sky.

Henry Ward Beecher
As warmth makes even glaciers trickle, and opens streams in the ribs of frozen mountains, so the heart knows the full flow and life of its grief only when it begins to melt and pass away.

Henry Ward Beecher
A cow is the saint of the barn-yard. She could be fat if she would only be selfish. But she economizes beauty that she may be profuse in milk.

Henry Ward Beecher
Going out into life--that is dying. Christ is the door out of life.

Henry Ward Beecher
If a man has come to that point where he is no content that he says; I do not want to know any more, or do any more or be any more, he is in a state in which he ought to be changed into a mummy.

Henry Ward Beecher
As flowers carry dewdrops, trembling on the edges of the petals, and ready to fall at the first waft of wind or brush of bird, so the heart should carry its beaded words of thanksgiving; and at the first breath of heavenly flavor, let down the shower, perfumed with the heart's gratitude.

Henry Ward Beecher
If a man can have only one kind of sense, let him have common sense. If he has that and uncommon sense too, he is not far from genius.

Henry Ward Beecher
Pain is God's midwife, that helps some virtue into existence.

Henry Ward Beecher
No church can be prospered in which all the ministration comes from the pulpit.

Henry Ward Beecher