John Greenleaf Whittier Quotes

178 Sourced Quotes

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

John Greenleaf Whittier
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!"

John Greenleaf Whittier
The windows of my soul I throw
Wide open to the sun.

John Greenleaf Whittier
To worship rightly is to love each other, each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer.

John Greenleaf Whittier
He comes, — he comes, — the Frost Spirit comes! — from the frozen Labrador, —
From the icy bridge of the Northern seas, which the white bear wanders o'er, —
Where the fisherman's sail is stiff with ice, and the luckless forms below
In the sunless cold of the lingering night into marble statues grow!

John Greenleaf Whittier
God's ways seem dark, but, soon or late,
They touch the shining hills of day;
The evil cannot brook delay,
The good can well afford to wait.

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

John Greenleaf Whittier
'Shoot, if you must, this old grey head,
But spare your country's flag,' she said.
A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,
Over the face of the leader came.

John Greenleaf Whittier
The Night is Mother of the Day,
The Winter of the Spring,
And ever upon old Decay
The greenest mosses cling.

John Greenleaf Whittier
The winds with hymns of praise are loud,
Or low with sobs of pain, —
The thunder-organ of the cloud,
The dropping tears of rain.

John Greenleaf Whittier
In kindly showers and sunshine bud
The branches of the dull gray wood;
Out from its sunned and sheltered nooks
The blue eye of the violet looks.

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

John Greenleaf Whittier
These children of the meadows, born
Of sunshine and of showers!

John Greenleaf Whittier
God is good and God is light In this faith I rest secure, Evil can but serve the right, Over all shall love endure.

John Greenleaf Whittier
So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore;
The glory from his gray hairs gone
For evermore!

John Greenleaf Whittier
Yet sometimes glimpses on my sight,
Through present wrong the eternal right;
And, step by step, since time began,
I see the steady gain of man;

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

John Greenleaf Whittier
Around the mighty master came
The marvels which his pencil wrought,
Those miracles of power whose fame
Is wide as human thought.

John Greenleaf Whittier
What! mothers from their children riven!
What! God's own image bought and sold!
Americans to market driven,
And bartered as the brute for gold!

John Greenleaf Whittier
He wedded a wife of richest dower,
Who lived for fashion, as he for power.
Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow,
He watched a picture come and go:
And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes
Looked out in their innocent surprise.

John Greenleaf Whittier
Let the thick curtain fall;
I better know than all
How little I have gained,
How vast the unattained.

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
For they the mind of Christ discern
Who lean, like John, upon His breast.

John Greenleaf Whittier
O, brother man! fold to thy heart thy brother;
where pity dwells, the peace of God is there.

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
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