Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

415 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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

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
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
There are many troubles which you cannot cure by the Bible and the hymn-book, but which you can cure by a good perspiration and a breath of fresh air.

Henry Ward Beecher
While a man is stringing a harp, he tries the strings, not for music, but for construction. When it is finished it shall be played for melodies. God is fashioning the human heart for future joy. He only sounds a string here and there to see how far His work has progressed.

Henry Ward Beecher
Many people are afraid to embrace religion, for fear they shall not succeed in maintaining it.

Henry Ward Beecher
That which distinguishes man from the brute is his power, in dealing with Nature, to milk her laws, and make them give forth their bounty.

Henry Ward Beecher
The superfluous blossoms on a fruit tree are meant to symbolize the large way God loves to do pleasant things.

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
God does not refuse to make himself known to man. He only will not do it by the symbolism of matter. He comes to us at once by the most natural course. We are in a transient state; our bodies are accidental, and God comes to us by that which is higher and truer--the intuitions of the soul.

Henry Ward Beecher
Providence is but another name for natural law. Natural law itself would go out in a minute if it were not for the divine thought that is behind it.

Henry Ward Beecher
No cradle for an emperor's child was ever prepared with so much magnificence as this world has been made for man. But it is only his cradle.

Henry Ward Beecher
Whoever makes home seem to the young dearer and more happy, is a public benefactor.

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

Henry Ward Beecher
Self-denial does not belong to religion as characteristic of it; it belongs to human life; the lower nature must always be denied when you are trying to rise to a higher sphere.

Henry Ward Beecher
If we are like Christ, we shall seek, not to absorb, but to reflect the light which falls upon others, and thus we shall become pure and spotless.

Henry Ward Beecher
Indeed, unless a man can link his written thoughts with the everlasting wants of men, so that they shall draw more from them as wells, there is no more immortality to the thoughts and feelings of the soul than to the muscles and bones.

Henry Ward Beecher
Many of our troubles are God dragging us, and they would end if we would stand upon our feet and go whither He would have us go.

Henry Ward Beecher
Flowers are weeds where they grow wildly and abundantly; and somewhere our rarest flowers are somebody's commonest.

Henry Ward Beecher
One might as well attempt to calculate mathematically the contingent forms of the tinkling bits of glass in a kaleidoscope as to look through the tube of the future and foretell its pattern.

Henry Ward Beecher
Mirthfulness is in the mind and you cannot get it out. It is just as good in its place as conscience or veneration.

Henry Ward Beecher