Quotes by Henry Ward Beecher

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) — Prediger · Kongregationalistisch · USA

Henry Ward Beecher war ein US-amerikanischer kongregationalistischer Prediger, der im 19. Jahrhundert vier Jahrzehnte lang die Plymouth Church in Brooklyn leitete. Er erlangte Bekanntheit als einflussreicher Redner gegen die Sklaverei und vertrat eine liberale Theologie, die die Liebe Gottes und gesellschaftliche Reformen ins Zentrum rückte. Für Bibelleser steht er für die Verbindung von Glaube und sozialem Engagement, dessen Lebenswerk jedoch durch theologische Kontroversen und einen aufsehenerregenden Ehebruchsskandal in den 1870er-Jahren belastet wurde.

Era: Revival & the 19th Century

Recurring topics: Wisdom & Understanding, Relationships & Family, Meaning & Identity, Guilt & Forgiveness, Growth & Character, Joy & Gratitude, Hope & Confidence, Church & Congregation

Quotes by 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

Every man should keep a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends.
Henry Ward Beecher

God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offense into everlasting forgiveness.
Henry Ward Beecher

It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.
Henry Ward Beecher

Life would be a perpetual flea hunt if a men were obliged to run down all the innuendos, inveracities, insinuations and misrepresentations which are uttered against him.
Henry Ward Beecher

Living is death; dying is life. On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that, citizens; on this side, orphans, on that, children; on this side, captives; on that, freemen; on this side, disguised, unknown; on that, disclosed and proclaimed as the sons of God.
Henry Ward Beecher

No physician ever weighed out medicine to his patients with half so much care and exactness as God weighs out to us every trial. Not one grain too much does He ever permit to be put in the scale.
Henry Ward Beecher

The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right.
Henry Ward Beecher

Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.
Henry Ward Beecher

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.
Henry Ward Beecher

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

There’s not much practical Christianity in the man who lives on better terms with angels and seraphs, than with his children, servants and neighbors.
Henry Ward Beecher

A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.
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

The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.
Henry Ward Beecher

I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note – torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.
Henry Ward Beecher

If a man cannot be a Christian in the place where he is, he cannot be a Christian anywhere.
Henry Ward Beecher

Sink the Bible to the bottom of the ocean, and still man’s obligations to God would be unchanged. He would have the same path to tread, only his lamp and guide would be gone; the same voyage to make, but his chart and compass would be overboard!
Henry Ward Beecher

The world’s battlefields have been in the heart chiefly; more heroism has been displayed in the household and the closet, than on the most memorable battlefields in history.
Henry Ward Beecher

A great many people think that Sunday is a sponge to wipe out the sins of the week.
Henry Ward Beecher

When a man sells eleven ounces for twelve, he makes a pact with the devil and sells himself for the value of one ounce.
Henry Ward Beecher

God asks no man whether he will accept life. This is not the choice. You must take it. The only questions is how.
Henry Ward Beecher

The test of Christian character should be that a man is a joy-bearing agent to the world.
Henry Ward Beecher

Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.
Henry Ward Beecher

We are always in the forge, or on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.
Henry Ward Beecher

Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.
Henry Ward Beecher

There is no faculty of the human soul so persistent as that of hatred. There are hatreds of race, sect and social and personal hatreds. If thoughts of hatred were thunder and lightning, there would be a storm over the whole earth all the year round.
Henry Ward Beecher

In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.
Henry Ward Beecher

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.
Henry Ward Beecher

What the mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin.
Henry Ward Beecher

Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.
Henry Ward Beecher

The strength and happiness of a man consists in finding out the way in which God is going, and going that way too.
Henry Ward Beecher

Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into.
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

Whoever can take a church and develop in it a good prayer meeting, carry it on through years and still have it fruitful, various, spiritual -- he is a General.
Henry Ward Beecher

Happiness is not the end of life; character is.
Henry Ward Beecher

He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.
Henry Ward Beecher

There never was a person who did anything worth doing, who did not receive more than he gave.
Henry Ward Beecher

The elect are whosoever will, and the non-elect, whosoever won’t.
Henry Ward Beecher

A man who does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good. And a man that does not know how to be shaken to his heart’s core with indignation over things evil is either a fungus or a wicked man.
Henry Ward Beecher

57 quotes in total — browse the collection.

Sources: wikipedia.org, ebsco.com, uark.edu, banneroftruth.org

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