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
Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.
—Henry Ward Beecher
A helping word to one in trouble is often like a switch on a railroad track … an inch between wreck and smooth rolling prosperity.
—Henry Ward Beecher
It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more on a man than he can bear. But worry is rust upon the blade. It is movement that destroys the machinery, but friction.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Work, Worry, Fear
Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Literature, Books, Reading
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: Perseverance, Resolve, Endurance
A tool is but the extension of a man’s hand and a machine is but a complex tool; and he that invents a machine augments the power of man and the well-being of mankind.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Invention, Science
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: Character, Money, Riches, Wealth, Happiness
We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Criticism, Critics
Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober, not to make us sorry but wise.
—Henry Ward Beecher
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
Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made, and forgot to put a soul into.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Affliction comes to us all not to make us sad, but sober; not to make us sorry, but wise; not to make us despondent, but by its darkness to refresh us, as the night refreshes the day; not to impoverish, but to enrich us, as the plough enriches the field; to multiply our joy, as the seed, by planting, is multiplied a thousand-fold.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Adversity
The one great poem of New England is her Sunday.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Any law that takes hold of a mans daily life cannot prevail in a community, unless the vast majority of the community are actively in favor of it. The laws that are the most operative are the laws which protect life.
—Henry Ward Beecher
The real man is one who always finds excuses for others, but never excuses himself.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Humanity
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: Greatness, Leadership, Strength
A man without self-restraint is like a barrel without hoops, and tumbles to pieces.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Self-Discovery
Next to ingratitude, the most painful thing to bear is gratitude.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Gratitude
Not that which men do worthily, but that which they do successfully, is what history makes haste to record.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Success
It’s not the work which kills people, it’s the worry. It’s not the revolution that destroys machinery it’s the friction.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Revolution, Health
It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Heaven will be inherited by every man who has heaven in his soul.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Heaven
Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself—and be lenient to everybody else.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Action, Excellence, Responsibility, Discipline
A man may be outwardly successful all his life long, and die hollow and worthless as a puff-ball; and he may be externally defeated all his life long, and die in the royalty of a kingdom established within him.—A man’s true estate of power and riches, is to be in himself; not in his dwelling, or position, or external relations, but in his own essential character.—That is the realm, in which he is to live, if he is to live as a Christian man.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Character, Self-Discovery
Greatness lies not in being strong,
but in the right use of strength.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Awareness, Adversity
Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith. We should live for the future, and yet should find our life in the fidelities of the present; the last is only the method of the first.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Faith, Worry, Future, Belief, The Future, Tomorrow
A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs—jolted by every pebble in the road.
—Henry Ward Beecher
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