Some people think black is the color of heaven, and that the more they can make their faces look like midnight, the more evidence they have of grace. But God, who made the sun and the flowers, never sent me to proclaim to you such a lie as that.
Henry Ward BeecherIt is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.
Henry Ward BeecherWhat is the Bible in your house? It is not the Old Testament, it is not the New Testament, it is not the Gospel according to Matthew, or Mark, or Luke, or John; it is the Gospel according to William; it is the Gospel according to Mary; it is the Gospel according to Henry and James; it is the Gospel according to your name. You write your own Bible.
Henry Ward BeecherAffliction comes to us all ...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 BeecherThere is not a person we employ who does not, like ourselves, desire recognition, praise, gentleness, forbearance, patience.
Henry Ward BeecherA 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 BeecherThere ought to be such an atmosphere in every Christian church that a man going there and sitting two hours should take the contagion of heaven, and carry home a fire to kindle the altar whence he came.
Henry Ward BeecherThe slave labors, but with no cheer - it is not the road to respectability, it will honor him with no citizens' trust, it brings no bread to his family, no grain to his garner, no leisure in after-days, no books or papers to his children. It opens no school-house door, builds no church, rears for him no factory, lays no keel, fills no bank, earns no acres. With sweat and toil and ignorance he consumes his life, to pour the earnings into channels from which he does no drink, into hands that never honor him. But perpetually rob and often torment.
Henry Ward BeecherNot another flag has such an errand, carrying everywhere, the world around, such hope for freedom such glorious tidings.
Henry Ward BeecherChristianity works while infidelity talks. She feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, visits and cheers the sick, and seeks the lost, while infidelity abuses her and babbles nonsense and profanity. 'By their fruits ye shall know them.'
Henry Ward BeecherWe should live and labor in our time that what came to us as a seed may go to the next generation as blossom, and what came to us as blossom, may go to them as fruit. This is what we mean by progress.
Henry Ward BeecherA man's religion is himself. If he is right-minded toward God, he is religious; if the Lord Jesus Christ is his schoolmaster, then he is Christianly religious.
Henry Ward BeecherEverything that happens in this world is a part of a great plan of God running through all time.
Henry Ward BeecherOf all formal things in the world, a clipped hedge is the most formal; and of all the informal things in the world, a forest tree is the most informal.
Henry Ward BeecherThe best stock a man can invest in, is the stock of a farm; the best shares are plow shares; and the best banks are the fertile banks of a rural stream; the more these are broken the better dividends they pay.
Henry Ward BeecherOnly have enough of little virtues and common fidelities, and you need not mourn because you are neither a hero nor a saint.
Henry Ward BeecherYou can imagine thistle-down so light that when you run after it your running motion would drive it away from you, and that the more you tried to catch it the faster it would fly from your grasp. And it should be with every man, that, when he is chased by troubles, they, chasing, shall raise him higher and higher.
Henry Ward BeecherI have great hope of a wicked man, slender hope of a mean one. A wicked man may be converted and become a prominent saint. A mean man ought to be converted six or seven times, one right after the other, to give him a fair start and put him on an equality with a bold, wicked man.
Henry Ward BeecherThere is no slave out of heaven like a loving woman; and of all loving women, there is no such slave as a mother.
Henry Ward BeecherEvery man should use his intellect, not as he uses his lamp in the study, only for his own seeing, but as the lighthouse uses its lamps, that those afar off on the seas may see the shining, and learn their way.
Henry Ward BeecherFor fidelity, devotion, love, many a two-legged animal is below the dog and the horse. Happy would it be for thousands of people if they could stand at last before the Judgment Seat and say, I have loved as truly and have lived as decently as my dog, and yet we call them only brutes.
Henry Ward BeecherNo town can fail of beauty, though its walks were gutters and its houses hovels, if venerable trees make magnificent colonnades along its streets.
Henry Ward BeecherRain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains.
Henry Ward BeecherA man who cannot get angry is like a stream that cannot overflow, that is always turbid. Sometimes indignation is as good as a thunderstorm in summer, clearing and cooling the air.
Henry Ward BeecherA 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 BeecherAre they dead that yet speak louder than we can speak, and a more universal language? Are they dead that yet act? Are they dead that yet move upon society and inspire the people with nobler motives and more heroic patriotism?
Henry Ward BeecherI pray on the principle that wine knocks the cork out of a bottle. There is an inward fermentation, and there must be a vent.
Henry Ward BeecherMake men large and strong and tyranny will bankrupt itself in making shackles for them.
Henry Ward BeecherSpeak of the appetite for drink; or of a bon-vivant's relish for dinner! What are these mere animal throes and ragings compared with those fantasies of taste, of those yearning of the imagination, of those insatiable appetites of intellect, which bewilder a student in a great bookseller's temptation-hall.
Henry Ward Beecher