American clergyman (1813-1887)
Character, like porcelain-ware, must be painted before it is glazed. There can be no change of color after it is burned in.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
As long as society is absolutely divided as milk is, the cream being at the top and the impoverished milk at the bottom, so long will society be unbalanced, and liable to be thrown into convulsions out of which will spring wars. A circulation throughout keeps it in health.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral-bell is already rung.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The mind has no kitchen to do its dirty work in while the parlor remains clean.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
There is no servant like God. No other being so humbles himself, and so bows down under weakness, and so lifts up with his strength, as God in the plenary service of Love.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Of all battles, there are none like the unrecorded battles of the soul.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
There are men who, supposing Providence to have an implacable spite against them, bemoan in the poverty of a wretched old age, the misfortunes of their lives. Luck forever ran against them, and for others; one, with a good profession, lost his luck in the river, where he idled away his time a-fishing, when he should have been in the office; another, with a good trade, perpetually burnt up his luck by his hot temper, which provoked all his employers to leave him; another, with a lucrative business, lost his luck by amazing diligence to everything but his business; and another, who steadily followed his trade, as steadily followed his bottle.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Twelve Lectures to Young Men
Men are not put into this world to be everlastingly played on by the harping fingers of joy.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Public sentiment is to public officers what water is to the wheel of the mill.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Men who act under dishonest passions are like men riding fierce horses: they cannot stop when they will, and they ride to ruin.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Do not give, as many rich men do, like a hen that lays her egg and then cackles.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
There are not anywhere else so many ways of trickery, so many false lights, so many veils, so many guises, so many illusive deceits, as are practiced in every man's conscience in respect to his motives, thoughts, feelings, conduct, and character.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Words are but the bannerets of a great army, a few bits of waving color here and there; thoughts are the main body of the footman that march unseen below.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Make men large and strong, and tyranny will bankrupt itself in making shackles for them.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
There is not on earth so base a knave as the man who wins the love of a woman when he knows that he cannot or ought not to requite it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
When a man says that he is perfect already, there is only one of two places for him, and that is heaven or the lunatic asylum.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
God makes the life fertile by disappointments, as he makes the ground fertile by frosts.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
It takes a man to make a devil.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
No people are so easy to govern as the intelligent, and none are so hard to govern as the ignorant.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit