American clergyman (1813-1887)
As I grow older, and come nearer to death, I look upon it more and more with complacent joy, and out of every longing I hear God say, "O thirsting, hungering one, come to me." What the other life will bring I know not, only that I shall awake in God's likeness, and see him as he is. If a child had been born and spent all his life in the Mammoth Cave, how impossible would it be for him to comprehend the upper world! His parents might tell him of its life, and light, and beauty, and its sounds of joy; they might heap the sand into mounds, and try to show him by pointing to stalactites how grass, and flowers, and trees grow out of the ground, till at length, with laborious thinking, the child would fancy he had gained a true idea of the unknown land. And yet, though he longed to behold it, when the day came that he was to go forth, it would be with regret for the familiar crystals, and the rock-hewn rooms, and the quiet that reigned therein. But when he came up, some May morning, with ten thousand birds singing in the trees, and the heavens bright, and blue, and full of sunlight, and the wind blowing softly through the young leaves, all a-glitter with dew, and the landscape stretching away green and beautiful to the horizon, with what rapture would he gaze about him, and see how poor were all the fancyings and the interpretations which were made within the cave, of the things which grew and lived without; and how would he wonder that he could have regretted to leave the silence and the dreary darkness of his old abode! So, when we emerge from this cave of earth into that land where spring growths are, and where is summer, and not that miserable travesty which we call summer here, how shall we wonder that we could have clung so fondly to this dark and barren life!
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Nothing in this world requires such long seasoning and ripening as new thoughts.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Selfishness at the expense of others' happiness is demonism.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Wealth in activity--capital with all its friction--is far safer than invested wealth lying dead.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A childless man is like a loose engine in a ship. A man must be bolted and screwed to the community before he can work well for its advancement; and there are no such screws and bolts as children.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
People may talk about the equality of the sexes! They are not equal. The silent smile of a sensible, loving woman will vanquish ten men.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Boys have a period of mischief as much as they have measles or chicken-pox.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A man that puts himself on the ground of moral principle, if the whole world be against him, is mightier than all of them.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
If every child might live the life predestined in a mother's heart, all the way from the cradle to the coffin, he would walk upon a beam of light, and shine in glory.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Hope is sweet-minded and sweet-eyed. It draws pictures; it weaves fancies; it fills the future with delight.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Faith is a recognition of those things which are above the senses.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Next to ingratitude, the most painful thing to bear is gratitude.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Christians! It is your duty not only to be good, but to shine; and, of all the lights which you kindle on the face, Joy will reach farthest out to sea, where troubled mariners are seeking the shore.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Liberty is the soul's right to breathe, and when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The Divine Being brings comfort and consolation to men. He is a God for men that are weak, and want to be strong; for men that are impure, and want to be pure; for men that are unjust, and want to be just; for men that are unloving, and want to be loving; for men that aspire to all the greatness and glory of which the soul is capable.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The church is no more religion than the masonry of the aqueduct is the water that flows through it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
What are called "fanatics" and "extremists" are only the men that God sends to make up the general average which the unfaithfulness of others lowers.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Religion is the whole soul marching heavenward to the music of joy and love, with well-ranked faculties, every one of them beating time and keeping tune.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
God's whole nature moves toward the man who wants to be free from sin, as broadly and irresistibly as the summer moves from the south toward the north.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Righteousness is as hereditary as vice, and godly men transmit moral qualities to their children, and to their children's children.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit