John Greenleaf Whittier Quotes

178 Sourced Quotes

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'

John Greenleaf Whittier
Peace hath higher tests of manhood
Than battle ever knew.

John Greenleaf Whittier
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.

John Greenleaf Whittier
From those great eyes The soul has fled:
When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The man is dead!

John Greenleaf Whittier
All day the darkness and the cold
Upon my heart have lain,
Like shadows on the winter sky,
Like frost upon the pane.

John Greenleaf Whittier
Speed on the ship; — But let her bear
No merchandise of sin,
No groaning cargo of despair
Her roomy hold within;
No Lethean, drug for Eastern lands,
Nor poison-draught for ours;
But honest fruits of toiling hands
And Nature's sun and showers.

John Greenleaf Whittier
A true life is at once interpreter and proof of the gospel.

John Greenleaf Whittier
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.

John Greenleaf Whittier
Falsehoods which we spurn today
Were the truths of long ago.

John Greenleaf Whittier
If woman lost us Eden, such as she alone can restore it.

John Greenleaf Whittier
The continuity of life is never broken; the river flows onward and is lost to our sight, but under its new horizon it carries the same waters which it gathered under ours, and its unseen valleys are made glad by the offerings which are borne down to them from the past,—flowers, perchance, the germs of which its own waves had planted on the banks of Time.

John Greenleaf Whittier
The outward wayward life we see,
The hidden springs we may not know—
It is not ours to separate
The tangled skein of will and fate.

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

John Greenleaf Whittier
Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and deeds alone suffice.

John Greenleaf Whittier
Blow, bugles of battle, the marches of peace;
East, west, north, and south let the long quarrel cease;
Sing the song of great joy that the angels began,
Sing of glory to God and of good-will to man!

John Greenleaf Whittier
Sweeter than any sung
My songs that found no tongue;
Nobler than any fact
My 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.

John Greenleaf Whittier
As on the sea of Galilee the Christ is whispering "Peace!"

John Greenleaf Whittier
Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time,
So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry;
Blot out the epic's stately rhyme,
But spare his "Highland Mary!"

John Greenleaf Whittier
Freedom's soil hath only place
For a free and fearless race!

John Greenleaf Whittier
Tradition wears a snowy beard, romance is always young.

John Greenleaf Whittier
Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress-trees!
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play!

John Greenleaf Whittier
Ah! memories of sweet summer eves,
Of moonlit wave and willowy way,
Of stars and flowers, and dewy leaves,
And smiles and tones more dear than they!

John Greenleaf Whittier
When freedom, on her natal day,
Within her war-rock'd cradle lay,
An iron race around her stood,
Baptiz'd her infant brow in blood,
And through the storm that round her swept,
Their constant ward and watching kept.

John Greenleaf Whittier
Drop Thy still dews of quietness, Till all our strivings cease; Take from our souls the strain and stress, And let our ordered lives confess The beauty of Thy peace.

John Greenleaf Whittier
I have friends in Spirit Land —
Not shadows in a shadowy band,
Not others but themselves are they,
And still I think of them the same
As when the Master's summons came.

John Greenleaf Whittier