Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

415 Sourced Quotes

You may say, "I wish to send this ball so as to kill the lion crouching yonder, ready to spring upon me. My wishes are all right, and I hope Providence will direct the ball." Providence won't. You must do it; and if you do not, you are a dead man.

Henry Ward Beecher
Earthly love is a brief and penurious stream, which only flows in spring, with a long summer drought. The change from a burning desert, treeless, springless, drear, to green fields and blooming orchards in June, is slight in comparison with that from the desert of this world's affection to the garden of God, where there is perpetual, tropical luxuriance of blessed love.

Henry Ward Beecher
A contest of roses is better than of horses.

Henry Ward Beecher
Some people think black is the color of heaven, and that the more they can make their faces look like midnight, the more evidence they have of grace. But God, who made the sun and the flowers, never sent me to proclaim to you such a lie as that.

Henry Ward Beecher
I think half the troubles for which men go slouching in prayer to God are caused by their intolerable pride. Many of our cares are but a morbid way of looking at our privileges. We let our blessings get mouldy, and then call them curses.

Henry Ward Beecher
Of all joyful, smiling, ever-laughing experiences, there are none like those which spring from true religion.

Henry Ward Beecher
Badgered, snubbed and scolded on the one hand; petted, flattered and indulged on the other-it is astonishing how many children work their way up to an honest manhood in spite of parents and friends. Human nature has an element of great toughness in it.

Henry Ward Beecher
There ought to be such an atmosphere in every Christian church that a man going there and sitting two hours should take the contagion of heaven, and carry home a fire to kindle the altar whence he came.

Henry Ward Beecher
Money in the hands of one or two men is like a dungheap in a barnyard. So long as it lies in a mass, it does no good; but, if it is only spread out evenly on the land, everything will grow.

Henry Ward Beecher
I would rather speak the truth to ten men than blandishments and lying to a million. Try it, ye who think there is nothing in it! Try what it is to speak with God behind you, to speak so as to be only the arrow in the bow which the Almighty draws.

Henry Ward Beecher
Thorough selfishness destroys or paralyzes enjoyment. A heart made selfish by the contest for wealth is like a citadel stormed in war, utterly shattered.

Henry Ward Beecher
Prayer is often an argument of laziness: "Lord, my temper gives me a vast deal of inconvenience, and it would be a great task for me to correct it; and wilt thou be pleased to correct it for me, that I may get along easier?" If prayer was answered under such circumstances, independent of action of natural laws, it would be paying a premium on indolence.

Henry Ward Beecher
Half the spiritual difficulties that men and women suffer arise from a morbid state of health.

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
The law is a battery, which protects all that is behind it, but sweeps with destruction all that is outside.

Henry Ward Beecher
Religion, in one sense, is a life of self-denial, just as husbandry, in one sense, is a work of death.

Henry Ward Beecher
There are no such indefatigable entomologists as birds.

Henry Ward Beecher
An ambition which has conscience in it will always be a laborious and faithful engineer, and will build the road, and bridge the chasms between itself and eminent success by the most faithful and minute performances of duty.

Henry Ward Beecher
What if the leaves were to fall a-weeping, and say, "It will be so painful for us to be pulled from our stalks, when autumn comes?" Foolish fear! Summer goes, and autumn succeeds. The glory of death is upon the leaves; and the gentlest breeze that blows takes them softly and silently from the bough, and they float slowly down, like fiery sparks, upon the moss.

Henry Ward Beecher
It is a very good world for the purposes for which it was built; and that is all anything is good for.

Henry Ward Beecher
God is a being who gives everything but punishment in over measure.

Henry Ward Beecher
Of all fools, a floral fool deserves the eminence.

Henry Ward Beecher
The church is no more religion than the masonry of the aqueduct is the water that flows through it.

Henry Ward Beecher
Religion is only another word for the right use of a man's whole self, instead of a wrong use of himself.

Henry Ward Beecher
Age and youth look upon life from the opposite ends of the telescope; it is exceedingly long,--it is exceedingly short.

Henry Ward Beecher
Character, like porcelain-ware, must be painted before it is glazed. There can be no change of color after it is burned in.

Henry Ward Beecher
What is the Bible in your house? It is not the Old Testament, it is not the New Testament, it is not the Gospel according to Matthew, or Mark, or Luke, or John; it is the Gospel according to William; it is the Gospel according to Mary; it is the Gospel according to Henry and James; it is the Gospel according to your name. You write your own Bible.

Henry Ward Beecher
Blessed are the happiness-makers! Blessed are they that take away attritions, that remove friction, that make the courses of life smooth, and the intercourse of men gentle!

Henry Ward Beecher
Happy is the man that loves flowers! Happy, even if it be a love adulterated with vanity and strife. For human passions nestle in flower-lovers too.

Henry Ward Beecher
Words are but the bannerets of a great army, a few bits of waving color here and there; thoughts are the main body of the footman that march unseen below.

Henry Ward Beecher