A man might frame, and let loose a star, to roll in its orbit, and yet not have done so memorable a thing before God, as he who lets go a golden-orbed thought to roll through the generations of time.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Thought
The exposition of future punishment in God’s word is not to be regarded as a threat, but as a merciful declaration.—If in the ocean of life, over which we are bound to eternity, there are these rocks and shoals, it is no cruelty to chart them down; it is an eminent and prominent mercy.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Punishment
If you attempt to beat a man down and so get his goods for less than a fair price, you are attempting to commit burglary as much as though you broke into his shop to take the things without paying for them.—There is cheating on both sides of the counter, and generally less behind it than before.
—Henry Ward Beecher
The heavens and the earth alike speak of God, and the great natural world is but another Bible, which clasps and binds the written one; for nature and grace are one—grace the heart of the flower, and nature its surrounding petals.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: World
A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Books
The whole of life and experience goes to show, that right or wrong doing, whether as to the physical or the spiritual nature, is sure in the end to meet its appropriate reward or punishment.—Penalties may be delayed, but they are sure to come.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Punishment
No man is prosperous whose immortality is forfeited.—No man is rich to whom the grave brings eternal bankruptcy.—No man is happy upon whose path there rests but a momentary glimmer of light, shining out between clouds that are closing over him in darkness forever.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Prosperity
I think you might dispense with half your doctors if you would only consult Dr. Sun more.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Light, Health
God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You must take it. The only question is how.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Acceptance, Life
There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them – the senses, intelligent companions, and books.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Graduation
There is no faculty of the human soul so persistent and universal as that of hatred.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Hate, Hatred
Intelligence increases mere physical ability one half.—The use of the head abridges the labor of the hands.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Intelligence
There is not a person we employ who does not, like ourselves, desire recognition, praise, gentleness, forbearance, patience.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Praise
Age and youth look upon life from the opposite ends of the telescope; to the one it is exceedingly long, to the other exceedingly short.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Life
Faith is spiritualized imagination.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Faith, Belief
Morality without religion has no roots.—It becomes a thing of custom, changeable, transient, and optional.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Morality
Men often abstain from the grosser vices as too coarse and common for their appetites, while the vices that are frosted and ornamented are served up to them as delicacies.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Vice
A cunning man overreaches no one half as much as himself.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Cunning
Many of our cares, says Scott, “are but a morbid way of looking at our privileges.”—We let our blessings get mouldy, and then call them curses.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Early marriages are permanent moralities; deferred marriages are temptations to wickedness.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Marriage
I read for three things: first, to know what the world has done during the last twenty-four hours, and is about to do today; second, for the knowledge that I specially want in my work; and third, for what will bring my mind into a proper mood.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Reading
Victories are easy and cheap. The only victories worth anything are those achieved through hard work and dedication.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Work
A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs—jolted by every pebble in the road.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Humor
There are many trials in life which do not seem to come from unwisdom or folly; they are silver arrows shot from the bow of God, and fixed inextricably in the quivering heart.—They are to be borne.—They were not meant, like snow or water, to melt as soon as they strike; but the moment an ill can be patiently borne it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Trials
What profusion is there in His work! When trees blossom there is not a single breastpin, but a whole bosom-full of gems; and of leaves they have so many suits that they can throw them away to the winds all summer long. What unnumbered cathedrals has He reared in the forest shades, vast and grand, full of curious carvings, and haunted evermore by tremulous music; and in the heavens above, how do stars seem to have flown out of His hand faster than sparks out of a mighty forge!
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Nature
Memory can glean, but never renew.—it brings us joys faint as is the perfume of the flowers, faded and dried, of the summer that is gone.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Memory
Sorrow makes men sincere.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Sorrow
No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Heart, Happiness, Riches, Wealth, Character, Money, Worth
A world without a Sabbath would be like a man without a smile, like a summer without flowers, and like a homestead without a garden. It is the joyous day of the whole week.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Refinement is the lifting of one’s self upwards from the merely sensual, the effort of the soul to etherealize the common wants and uses of life.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Norman Vincent Peale American Clergyman, Self-Help Author
- Reinhold Niebuhr American Theologian
- Charles Henry Parkhurst American Clergyman
- Albert Benjamin Simpson Canadian Theologian
- James Freeman Clarke American Clergyman
- Harriet Beecher Stowe American Abolitionist
- William Sloane Coffin American Clergyman
- Frederick Buechner American Writer, Theologian
- Hosea Ballou American Theologian
- Edward Everett Hale American Unitarian Clergyman
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