HENRY WARD BEECHER QUOTES XVI

American clergyman (1813-1887)

It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. If you are angry with a man, or hate him, it is not hard to go to him and stab him with words; but so to love a man that you cannot bear to see the stain of sin upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words--that is friendship. But few have such friends. Our enemies usually teach us what we are, at the point of the sword.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


He that lives by the sight of the eye may grow blind.

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 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.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Take from the Bible the Godship of Christ, and it would be but a heap of dust.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Love, in this world, is like a seed taken from the tropics, and planted where the winter comes too soon; and it cannot spread itself in flower-clusters and wide-twining vines, so that the whole air is filled with the perfume thereof. But there is to be another summer for it yet. Care for the root now, and God will care for the top by and by.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


God puts the excess of hope in one man, in order that it may be a medicine to the man who is despondent.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Every artist dips his brush in his own soul and paints his own nature into his pictures.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


A babe is nothing but a bundle of possibilities.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


There never was a liar that had not a spot in him where he could not help admiring truth.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Selfishness at the expense of others' happiness is demonism.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


No man ever grows to a full man's estate without the ministration of suffering.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Love is the wine of existence. When you have taken that, you have taken the most precious drop that there is in the cluster.

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


Christians ought not to slander God by looking as if they were at an everlasting funeral.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


A rule is like a mold; you pour in the wax, and when it is pressed, it comes out, and the mold is left behind.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


A man ought to carry himself in the world as an orange tree would if it could walk up and down in the garden--swinging perfume from every little censer it holds up to the air.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


We never know the love of our parents for us till we have become parents.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


That is the best baptism that leaves the man cleanest inside.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


That endless book, the newspaper, is our national glory.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit