John Greenleaf Whittier Quotes

178 Sourced Quotes

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
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
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
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
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
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
Tradition wears a snowy beard, romance is always young.

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

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

John Greenleaf Whittier
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!

John Greenleaf Whittier
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!

John Greenleaf Whittier
Through this broad street, restless ever, ebbs and flows a human tide, wave on wave a living river; wealth and fashion side by side; Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick current glide.

John Greenleaf Whittier
Who fathoms the Eternal Thought? Who talks of scheme and plan? The Lord is God! He needeth not The poor device of man.

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

John Greenleaf Whittier
And close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from brown October's wood. And close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from brown October's wood.

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

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

John Greenleaf Whittier
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!

John Greenleaf Whittier
The garden rose may richly bloom In cultured soil and genial air, To cloud the light of Fashion's room Or droop in Beauty's midnight hair, In lonelier grace, to sun and dew The sweetbrier on the hillside shows Its single leaf and fainter hue, Untrained and wildly free, yet still a sister rose!

John Greenleaf Whittier
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.

John Greenleaf Whittier
We faintly hear, we dimly see, In differing phrase we pray; But dim or clear, we own in Him The life, the truth, the way.

John Greenleaf Whittier
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.

John Greenleaf Whittier