Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) was an American Congregational clergyman and a prominent advocate of social reform. He was one of the most influential Protestant ministers in the United States from 1850–87.
Born in Litchfield, Connecticut, Beecher was the son of the Presbyterian minister and temperance movement leader Lyman Beecher. Henry was educated at Amherst College, Massachusetts. He initially preached at Indianapolis and, in 1847, became the first pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn, New York City. He remained there for the rest of his life and made it one of the most influential American pulpits, attracting crowds of 2,500 every Sunday.
Increasingly outspoken after the Civil War, Beecher supported a moderate Reconstruction policy for the South and advocated woman suffrage, evolutionary theory, and scientific biblical criticism.
For many years, Beecher wrote for The Independent and edited The Christian Union Oater Outlook after 1870. His 40 published volumes included Seven Lectures to Young Men (1844,) Summer in the Soul (1858,) Yale Lectures on Preaching (1874,) and Evolution and Religion (1885.)
Beecher was the brother of the abolitionist and novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)) and the educationalist Catharine Beecher.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Henry Ward Beecher
Never forget what a man has said to you when he was angry. If he has charged you with anything, you had better look it up.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Anger
Heaven will be inherited by every man who has heaven in his soul.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Heaven
The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Religion, Churches
A man in old age is like a sword in a shop window. Men that look upon the perfect blade do not imagine the process by which it was completed. Man is a sword; daily life is the workshop; and God is the artificer; and those cares which beat upon the anvil, and file the edge, and eat in, acid-like, the inscription on the hilt—those are the very things that fashion the man.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Discipline
Good nature is often a mere matter of health.—With good digestion we are apt to be good natured; with bad digestion, morose.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Goodness
Our gifts and attainments are not only to be light and warmth in our own dwellings, but are to shine through the window, into the dark night, to guide and cheer bewildered travellers on the road.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Selfishness, Influence
A man without mirth is like wagon without springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which it turns.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Happiness
I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive.”—Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note—torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Forgiveness
Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Children, Heaven, One liners
Never forget what a person says to you when they are angry.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Anger
Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Gratitude
Never forget what a man says to you when he is angry.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Anger
The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret of outward success.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: One liners, Ability
If Christ is not divine, every impulse of the Christian world falls to a lower octave, and light and love and hope decline.
—Henry Ward Beecher
We should live for the future, and yet should find our life in the fidelities of the present; the last is the only method of the first.
—Henry Ward Beecher
The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Endurance, Resolve, Perseverance
Sorrow makes men sincere.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Sorrow
Unless a man can link his written thoughts with the everlasting wants of men, so that they shall draw from them as from wells, there is no more immortality to the thoughts and feelings of the soul than to the muscles and the bones.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Thought
There is no faculty of the human soul so persistent and universal as that of hatred.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Hate, Hatred
What would the nightingale care if the toad despised her singing? She would still sing on, and leave the cold toad to his dark shadows. And what care I for the sneers of men who grovel upon earth? I will still sing on in the ear and bosom of God.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Leadership, Greatness, Influence, Heart, Strength
When a nation’s young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Conservatives
The moment an ill can be patiently handled, it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Pain
Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Books, Reading
Suffering is part of the divine idea.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Part of The Whole, Suffering
What a pity flowers can utter no sound?—A singing rose, a whispering violet, a murmuring honeysuckle,—oh, what a rare and exquisite miracle would these be!
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Flowers
To make beads of the faults of others, and tell them over every day, is infernal.—If you want to know how devils feel, you do know if you are such an one.
—Henry Ward Beecher
The way to avoid evil is not by maiming our passions, but by compelling them to yield their vigor to our moral nature.—Thus they become, as in the ancient fable, the harnessed steeds that bear the chariot of the sun.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Passion
Men’s best successes come after their disappointments.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Mistakes, Failures
No man is such a conqueror, as the one that has defeated himself.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Discipline
See that each hour’s feelings, and thoughts and actions are pure and true; then your life will be also.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Feelings
A man that puts himself on the ground of moral principle, though the whole world be against him, is mightier than them all; for the orb of time becomes such a man’s shield, and every step brings him nearer to the hand of omnipotence.—Take ground for truth, and justice, and rectitude, and piety, and fight well, and there can be no question as to the result.—We are to feel that right is itself a host.—Never be afraid of minorities, so that minorities are based on principles.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Laws and institutions are constantly tending to gravitate. Like clocks, they must be occasionally cleansed, and wound up, and set to true time.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Laws, Law
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
Topics: Common Sense
It is not well for a man to pray cream and live skim milk.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Prayer
I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, “I will not forgive.” Forgiveness ought to be like a canceled note—torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Forgiveness
To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Secrets
Not that which men do worthily, but that which they do successfully, is what history makes haste to record.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Success
Joy is more divine than sorrow, for joy is bread and sorrow is medicine.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Joy
He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Duty
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