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
God appoints our graces to be nurses to other men’s weaknesses.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Grace
Men’s best successes come after their disappointments.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Mistakes, Failures
Happy is the man who has that in his soul which acts upon the dejected as April airs upon violet roots. Gifts from the hand are silver and gold, but the heart gives that which neither silver nor gold can buy. To be full of goodness, full of cheerfulness, full of sympathy, full of helpful hope, causes a man to carry blessings of which he is himself as unconscious as a lamp is of its own shining. Such a one moves on human life as stars move on dark seas to bewildered mariners; as the sun wheels, bringing all the season with him from the south.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Sympathy
Despondency is ingratitude; hope is God’s worship.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Men who walk on tiptoe all through life, holding up their skirts for fear they shall touch their fellows—who are delicate and refined in feeling, and who ring all the bells of taste high up in their own belfry where no one else can hear them, these dainty fools are the greatest sinners of all, for they use their higher faculties to serve the devil with.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep-burning, unquenchable.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Feelings, Love
Prayer, as the first, second, and third element of the Christian life, should open, prolong, and conclude each day. The first act of the soul in early morning should be a draught at the heavenly fountain. It will sweeten the taste for the day. A few moments with God at that calm and tranquil season, are of more value than much fine gold. And if you tarry long so sweetly at the throne, you will come out of the closet as the high priest of Israel came from the awful ministry at the altar of incense, suffused all over with the heavenly fragrance of that communion.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Prayer
The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Perseverance, Persistence
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: Self-Discovery, Identity, Character
Watch lest prosperity destroy generosity.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Prosperity, Generosity
There is tonic in the things that men do not love to hear. Free speech is to a great people what the winds are to oceans … and where free speech is stopped miasma is bred, and death comes fast.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Speech
What we call wisdom is the result of all the wisdom of past ages.—Our best institutions are like young trees growing upon the roots of the old trunks that have crumbled away.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Wisdom
Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Awareness, Adversity, Self-Esteem
Difficulties are God’s errands; and when we are sent upon them we should esteem it a proof of God’s confidence—as a compliment from him.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Difficulty
Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without himself.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Selfishness
We never know the love of the parent till we become parents ourselves. When we first bend over the cradle of our own child, God throws back the temple door, and reveals to us the sacredness and mystery of a father’s and a mother’s love to ourselves.—And in later years, when these have gone from us, there is always a certain sorrow, that we cannot tell them we have found it out.—One of the deepest experiences of a noble nature in reference to the loved ones that have passed beyond this world, is the thought of what he might have been to them, and done for them, if he had known, while they were living, what he has learned since they died.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Parents, Parenting
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: Science, Invention
We never know how much one loves till we know how much he is willing to endure and suffer for us; and it is the suffering element that measures love.—The characters that are great, must, of necessity, be characters, that shall be willing, patient, and strong to endure for others.—To hold our nature in the willing service of another, is the divine idea of manhood, of the human character.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Love
Never be afraid because the community teems with excitement.—Silence and death are dreadful.—The rush of life, the vigor of earnest men, and the conflict of realities, invigorate, cleanse, and establish the truth.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Excitement
There are many persons who look on Sunday as a sponge to wipe out the sins of the week.
—Henry Ward Beecher
God made man to go by motives, and he will not go without them, any more than a boat without steam, or a balloon without gas.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Motivation, Motivational
A library is but the soul’s burying ground. It is a land of shadows.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Libraries
The prouder a man is, the more he thinks he deserves, and the more he thinks he deserves, the less he really does deserve.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Riches
The power of hiding ourselves from one other is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts, and would devour one another but for this protection.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Give, Power
Morality is character and conduct such as is required by the circle or community in which the man’s life happens to be placed. It shows how much good men require of us.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Morals
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
When we borrow trouble, and look forward into the future and see what storms are coming, and distress ourselves before they come, as to how we shall avert them if they ever do come, we lose our proper trustfulness in God. When we torment ourselves with imaginary dangers, or trials, or reverses, we have already parted with that perfect love which casteth out fear.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Anxiety, Trouble
Love cannot endure indifference. It needs to be wanted. Like a lamp, it needs to be fed out of the oil of another’s heart, or its flame burns low.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Love
The love of knowledge in a young mind is almost a warrant against the infirm excitement of passions and vices.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Knowledge
Faith is spiritualized imagination.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Topics: Belief, Faith
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