Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

415 Sourced Quotes

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
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 great hope of a wicked man, slender hope of a mean one. A wicked man may be converted and become a prominent saint. A mean man ought to be converted six or seven times, one right after the other, to give him a fair start and put him on an equality with a bold, wicked man.

Henry Ward Beecher
A lie is a very short wick in a very small lamp. The oil of reputation is very soon sucked up and gone. And just as soon as a man is known to lie, he is like a two-foot pump in a hundred-foot well. He cannot touch bottom at all.

Henry Ward Beecher
The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day. It is a blessed baptism which gives the first waking thoughts into the bosom of God.

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

Henry Ward Beecher
All human affairs follow nature's great analogue, the growth of vegetation. There are three periods of growth in every plant. The first, and slowest, is the invisible growth by the root; the second and much accelerated is the visible growth by the stem; but when root and stem have gathered their forces, there comes the third period, in which the plant quickly flashes into blossom and rushes into fruit.

Henry Ward Beecher
The disciples found angels at the grave of Him they loved; and we should always find them too, but that our eyes are too full of tears for seeing.

Henry Ward Beecher
Every man is full of music; but it is not every man that knows how to bring it out.

Henry Ward Beecher
Men who neglect Christ, and try to win heaven through moralities, are like sailors at sea in a storm, who pull, some at the bowsprit and some at the mainmast, but never touch the helm.

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
Love is ownership. We own whom we love. The universe is God's because He loves.

Henry Ward Beecher
Newton sat in an orchard, and an apple, plumping down on his head, started a train of thought which opened the heavens to us. Had it been in California, the size of the apples there would have saved him the trouble of much thinking thereafter, perhaps, opening the heavens to him, and not to us.

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

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
May we be satisfied with nothing that shall not have in it something of immortality.

Henry Ward Beecher