Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

415 Sourced Quotes

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

Henry Ward Beecher
A Christianity which will not help those who are struggling from the bottom to the top of society, needs another Christ to die for it.

Henry Ward Beecher
He who only does not appreciate floral beauty is to be pitied like any other man who is born imperfect.

Henry Ward Beecher
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
Public sentiment is to public officers what water is to the wheel of the mill.

Henry Ward Beecher
This world is magnificent for strangers and pilgrims, but miserable for residents.

Henry Ward Beecher
Let parents who hate their offspring rear them to hate labor, and to inherit riches; and before long they will be stung by every vice, racked by its poison, and damned by its penalty.

Henry Ward Beecher
If you are idle, you are on the road to ruin; and there are few stopping-places upon it. It is rather a precipice than a road

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

Henry Ward Beecher
The mere wit is only a human bauble. He is to life what bells are to horses-not expected to draw the load, but only to jingle while the horses draw.

Henry Ward Beecher
But there have been human hearts, constituted just like ours, for six thousand years. The same stars rise and set upon this globe that rose upon the plains of Shinar or along the Egyptian Nile and the same sorrows rise and set in every age.

Henry Ward Beecher
Our children that die young are like those spring bulbs which have their flowers prepared beforehand, and leave nothing to do but to break ground, and blossom, and pass away. Thank God for spring flowers among men, as well as among the grasses of the field.

Henry Ward Beecher
I have known men who thought the object of conversion was to cleanse them as a garment is cleansed, and that when they are converted they were to be hung up in the Lord's wardrobe, the door of which was to be shut, so that no dust could get at them. A coat that is not used the moths eat; and a Christian who is hung up so that he shall not be tempted, the moths eat him; and they have poor food at that.

Henry Ward Beecher
The apple-tree is tough as an Indian, patient as an ox, and fruitful as the Jewish Rachael.

Henry Ward Beecher
Men do not avail themselves of the riches of God's grace. They love to nurse their cares, and seem as uneasy without some fret as an old friar would be without his hair girdle. They are commanded to cast their cares upon the Lord, but even when they attempt it, they do not fail to catch them up again, and think it meritorious to walk burdened.

Henry Ward Beecher
A man's true estate of power and riches is to be in himself; not in his dwelling or position or external relations, but in his own essential character.

Henry Ward Beecher
The conditions of city life may be made healthy, so far as the physical constitution is concerned; but there is connected with the business of the city so much competition, so much rivalry, so much necessity for industry, that I think it is a perpetual, chronic, wholesale violation of natural law. There are ten men that can succeed in the country, where there is one that can succeed in the city.

Henry Ward Beecher
Morality is good, and is accepted of God, as far as it goes; but the difficulty is, it does not go far enough.

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
We know that the gifts which men have do not come from the schools. If a man is a plain, literal, factual man, you can make a great deal more of him in his own line by education than without education, just as you can make a great deal more of a potato if you cultivate it than if you do not; but no cultivation in this world will ever make an apple out of a potato.

Henry Ward Beecher
There is no right more universal and more sacred, because lying so near the root of existence, than the right of men to their own labor.

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

Henry Ward Beecher
The poor man with industry is happier than the rich man in idleness.

Henry Ward Beecher
To the covetous man life is a nightmare, and God lets him wrestle with it as best he may.

Henry Ward Beecher
And when no longer we can see Thee, may we reach out our hands, and find Thee leading us through death to immortality and glory.

Henry Ward Beecher
This world is not a platform where you will hear Thalberg-piano-playing. It is a piano manufactory, where are dust and shavings and boards, and saws and files and rasps and sandpapers. The perfect instrument and the music will be hereafter.

Henry Ward Beecher
Thinking is creating with God, as thinking is writing with the ready writer; and worlds are only leaves turned over in the process of composition, about his throne.

Henry Ward Beecher
Blessed be the man whose work drives him. Something must drive men; and if it is wholesome industry, they have no time for a thousand torments and temptations.

Henry Ward Beecher
The gravest events dawn with no more noise than the morning star makes in rising. All great developments complete themselves in the world and modestly wait in silence, praising themselves never, and announcing themselves not at all. We must be sensitive, and sensible, if we would see the beginnings and endings of great things. That is our part.

Henry Ward Beecher
Heaven answers with us the same purpose that the tuning-fork does with musicians. Our affections, the whole orchestra of them, are apt to get below the concert-pitch; and we take heaven to tune our hearts by.

Henry Ward Beecher