American clergyman (1813-1887)
There are multitudes of persons whose idea of liberty is the right to do what they please, instead of the right of doing that which is lawful and best.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Little lies are very dangerous, because there are so many of them, and because each one of them scours upon the character as diamond-pointed.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Public sentiment is to public officers what water is to the wheel of the mill.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The law is a batter, which protects all that is behind it, but sweeps with destruction all that is outside.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
When we have heartily repented of a wrong, we should let all the waves of forgetfulness roll over it, and go forward unburdened to meet the future.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Wherever you have seen God pass, mark that spot, and go and sit in that window again.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A law is valuable, not because it is a law, but because there is right in it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
A man's soul ought to be as the heavens were on the night when the shepherds looked up, and saw them full of angels as well as stars.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
As long as society is absolutely divided as milk is, the cream being at the top and the impoverished milk at the bottom, so long will society be unbalanced, and liable to be thrown into convulsions out of which will spring wars. A circulation throughout keeps it in health.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Men go shopping just as men go out fishing or hunting, to see how large a fish may be caught with the smallest hook.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Our life is but a new form of the way men have lived from the beginning.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Repentance is the turning of the soul from the way of midnight to the point of the coming sun.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
The beginning is the promise of the end.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
There are not anywhere else so many ways of trickery, so many false lights, so many veils, so many guises, so many illusive deceits, as are practiced in every man's conscience in respect to his motives, thoughts, feelings, conduct, and character.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
There is no servant like God. No other being so humbles himself, and so bows down under weakness, and so lifts up with his strength, as God in the plenary service of Love.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
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
Life Thoughts
Some critics, and for that matter most of them, I fear, rejoice in faults as buzzards do in carrion, to feed upon it; but a true critic is a surgeon, who cuts away the wen, or imposthume, that he may rejoice in the cleanness of a body restored to health.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Spreading Christianity abroad is sometimes an excuse for not having it at home.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
We need not fear shipwreck when God is the pilot.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit