John Greenleaf Whittier Quotes

178 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

John Greenleaf Whittier
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!

John Greenleaf Whittier
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.

John Greenleaf Whittier
The great eventful Present hides the Past; but through the din Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life behind steal in.

John Greenleaf Whittier
The green earth sends her incense up. From many a mountain shrine; From folded leaf and dewey cup She pours her sacred wine.

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

John Greenleaf Whittier
Happy he whose inward ear Angel comfortings can hear, O'er the rabble's laughter; And, while Hatred's fagots burn, Glimpses through the smoke discern Of the good hereafter.

John Greenleaf Whittier
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.

John Greenleaf Whittier
The Fates are just: they give us but our own; Nemesis ripens what our hands have sown.

John Greenleaf Whittier
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.

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
And let these altars, wreathed with flowers And piled with fruits, awake again Thanksgivings for the golden hours, The early and the latter rain!

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
On leaf of palm, on sedge-wrought roll; on plastic clay and leather scroll, man wrote his thoughts; the ages passed, and lo! the Press was found at last!

John Greenleaf Whittier
We search the world for truth; we cull The good, the pure, the beautiful, From all old flower fields of the soul; And, weary seeker of the best, We come back laden from out quest, To find that all the sages said Is in the Book our mothers read.

John Greenleaf Whittier