John Greenleaf Whittier Quotations

All the windows of my heart I open to the day.

Give fools their gold, and knaves their power; let fortune's bubbles rise and fall; who sows a field, or trains a flower, or plants a tree, is more than all.

Tradition wears a snowy beard, romance is always young.

When faith is lost, when honor dies, the man is dead.

For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, 'It might have been'.

Before me, even as behind, God is, and all is well.

Beauty seen is never lost, God's colors all are fast.

From the death of the old the new proceeds, and the life of truth from the death of creeds.

I'll lift you and you lift me, and we'll both ascend together.

As a small businessperson, you have no greater leverage than the truth.

Peace hath higher tests of manhood, than battle ever knew.

And the more you spend in blessing The poor and lonely and sad, The more of your heart's possessing Returns to you glad.

God blesses still the generous thought,And still the fitting word He speeds,And Truth, at His requiring taught,He quickens into deeds.

Who never wins can rarely lose, Who never climbs as rarely falls

All day the darkness and the cold Upon my heart have lain Like shadows on the winter sky Like frost upon the pane

The tints of autumn...a mighty flower garden blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost.

Again the blackbirds sings; the streams Wake, laughing, from their winter dreams, And tremble in the April showers The tassels of the maple flowers.

God fills the gaps of human need, Each crisis brings its word and deed.

Clothe with life the weak intent, Let me be the thing I meant ...

The simple heart that freely asks in love, obtains.

Through the dark and stormy night Faith beholds a feeble light Up the blackness streaking; Knowing God's own time is best, In a patient hope I rest For the full day-breaking!

One brave deed makes no hero.

the joy that you give to others is the joy that comes back to you

A little smile, a word of cheer, A bit of love from someone near, A little gift from one held dear, Best wishes for the coming year. These make a merry christmas!

Every chain that spirits wear crumbles in the breadth of prayer.

Sweeter than any sungMy songs that found no tongue;Nobler than any factMy wish that failed of act.Others shall sing the song,Others shall right the wrong,-Finish what I begin,And all I fail of win.

I hear the tread of pioneers Of nations yet to be, The first low wash of waves where soon Shall roll a human sea.

Bathsheba! to whom none ever said scat- No worthier cat Ever sat on a mat, Or caught a rat. Requiescat!

This is truth the poet sings . . .

The child must teach the man.

Dear Lord and Father of mankind, Forgive our foolish ways! Re-clothe us in our rightful mind, In purer lives thy service find, In deeper reverence praise

Beauty is its own excuse.

From purest wells of English undefiled None deeper drank than he, the New World's Child, Who in the language of their farm field spoke The wit and wisdom of New England folk.

They who wander widest lift No more of beauties' jealous veils, Than they who from their doorways see The miracle of flowers and trees.

Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West, From North and South, come the pilgrim and guest, When the gray-haired New Englander sees round his board The old broken links of affection restored, When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more, And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before. What moistens the lips and what brightens the eye? What calls back the past, like the rich pumpkin pie?

At what point does a man turn into a monster? I don’t believe that it’s when he does horrible things, but when he accepts that he’s able to do them, and that he does them well.

To be saved is only this-salvation from our own selfishness.

Here Greek and Roman find themselves alive along these crowded shelves; and Shakespeare treads again his stage, and Chaucer paints anew his age.

Reason's voice and God's, Nature's and Duty's, never are at odds.

Our toil is sweet with thankfulness, Our burden is our boon; The curse of earth's gray morning is The blessing of its noon.

What does the good ship bear so well? The cocoa-nut with its stony shell, And the milky sap of its inner cell.

Let the thick curtain fall;I better know than allHow little I have gained,How vast the unattained.

Others may sing the song. Others may right the wrong.

Formed on the good old plan, A true and brave and downright honest man! He blew no trumpet in the market-place, Nor in the church with hypocritic face Supplied with cant the lack of Christian grace; Loathing pretence, he did with cheerful will What others talked of while their hands were still.

The Beauty which old Greece or RomeSung, painted, wrought, lies close at home.

And light is mingled with the gloom, And joy with grief; Divinest compensations come, Through thorns of judgment mercies bloom In sweet relief.

Rap, rap! upon the well-worn stone, How falls the polished hammer! Rap, rap! the measured sound has grown A quick and merry clamor. Now shape the sole! now deftly curl The glassy vamp around it, And bless the while the bright-eyed girl Whose gentle fingers bound it!

What airs outblown from ferny dells And clover-bloom and sweet brier smells.

Thanks to Allah, who gives the palm!

Up from the meadows rich with corn, Clear in the cool September morn

If woman lost us Eden, such As she alone restore it.

The still, sad music of humanity.

There's life alone in duty done, And rest alone in striving.

I dimly guess, from blessings known, of greater out of sight.

Simple duty hath no place for fear.

Oh, talk as we may of beauty as a thing to be chiselled from marble or wrought out on canvas, speculate as we may upon its colors and outlines, what is it but an intellectual abstraction, after all? The heart feels a beauty of another kind; looking through the outward environment, it discovers a deeper and more real love-liness.

Oh, for boyhood's painless play, sleep that wakes in laughing day, health that mocks the doctor's rules, knowledge never learned of schools.

The dreariest spot in all the land to Death they set apart; with scanty grace from Nature's hand, and none from that of Art.

We meet today To thank Thee for the era done, And Thee for the opening one.

They tell me, Lucy, thou art dead, that all of thee we loved and cherished has with thy summer roses perished; and left, as its young beauty fled, an ashen memory in its stead.

Who sows a field, or trains a flower, Or plants at tree, is more than all.

Once more the liberal year laughs out O'er richer stores than gems or gold: Once more with harvest song and shout Is nature's boldest triumph told.

His daily prayer, far better understood in acts than in words, was simply doing good.

The hope of all who suffer, The dread of all who wrong.

Low stir of leaves and dip of oars And lapsing waves on quiet shores.

For still the new transcends the old In signs and tokens manifold; Slaves rise up men; the olive waves, With roots deep set in battle graves!

What is really momentous and all-important with us is the present, by which the future is shaped and colored.

Romance is always young.

Along the river's summer walk, The withered tufts of asters nod; And trembles on its arid stalk the hoar plum of the golden-rod.

O Time and change! - with hair as gray as was my sire's that winter day, how strange it seems, with so much gone of life and love, to still live on!

Swan flocks of lilies shoreward lying, In sweetness, not in music, dying.

What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye? What calls back the past like the rich pumpkin pie?

And I will trust that He who heeds The life that hides in mead and wold, Who hangs you alder's crimson beads, And stains these mosses green and gold, Will still, as He hath done, incline His gracious care to me and mine.

Up from the sea, the wild north wind is blowing, under the sky's gray arch. Smiling, I watch the shaken elm boughs, knowing It is the wind of March.

Somewhat of goodness, something true From sun and spirit shining through All faiths, all worlds, as through the dark Of ocean shines the lighthouse spark, Attests the presence everywhere Of love and providential care.

Quite the ugliest face I ever saw was that of a woman whom the world called beautiful. Through its silver veil the evil and ungentle passions looked out, hideous and hateful.

With our sympathy for the wrongdoer we need the old Puritan and Quaker hatred of wrongdoing; with our just tolerance of men and opinions a righteous abhorrence of sin.

Nature eschews regular lines; she does not shape her lines by a common model. Not one of Eve's numerous progeny in all respects resembles her who first culled the flowers of Eden. To the infinite variety and picturesque inequality of nature we owe the great charm of her uncloying beauty.

Man is more than constitutions.

What, my soul, was thy errand here? Was it mirth or ease, Or heaping up dust from year to year? "Nay, none of these!" Speak, soul, aright in His holy sight, Whose eye looks still And steadily on thee through the night; "To do His will!

With warning hand I mark Time's rapid flight, From Life's glad morning to its solemn night; Yet, through the dear Lord's love, I also show There's light above me by the shade I throw.

Leaning on Him, make with reverent meekness His own thy will.

Truth should be the first lesson of the child and the last aspiration of manhood; for it has been well said that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.

Children have neither past nor future - they rejoice in the present.

Round the boles of the pine-wood the ground-laurel creeps, Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized of showers, With buds scarcely swelled, which should burst into flowers!

Rest if you must, but never quit.

Truth is one; And, in all lands beneath the sun, Whoso hath eyes to see may see The tokens of its unity.

It is well for us if we have learned to listen to the sweet persuasion of the Beatitudes, but there are crises in all lives which require also the emphatic "Thou shalt not" of the decalogue which the founders wrote on the gateposts of their commonwealth.

Time is hastening on, and we What our fathers are shall be,-- Shadow-shapes of memory! Joined to that vast multitude Where the great are but the good.

Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck, And hear a cry from a reeling deck!

Press bravely onward! - not in vainYour generous trust in human kind;The good which bloodshed could not gainYour peaceful zeal shall find.

A charmed life old goodness hath; the tares may perish, but the grain is not for death.

Better heresy of doctrine than heresy of heart.

A bending staff I would not break, A feeble faith I would not shake, Nor even rashly pluck away The error which some truth may stay, Whose loss might leave the soul without A shield against the shafts of doubt.

The good is always beautiful, the beautiful is good!

Falsehoods which we spurn today, were the truths of long ago.

The hope of all earnest souls must be realized.

The Present, the Present is all thou hast For thy sure possessing; Like the patriarch's angel hold it fast Till it gives its blessing.

A felon's cell-- The fittest earthly type of hell!

We shape ourselves the joy or fear Of which the coming life is made, And fill our Future's atmosphere With sunshine or with shade.