Julia Ward Howe Quotes

34 Sourced Quotes

Here I am, in Quaker surroundings, whose restful simplicity is most congenial to me. I feel here the earnest desire for genuine growth and culture which founds a slow but sure success. I am confirmed in my division of human energies. Ambitious people climb, but faithful people build.

Julia Ward Howe
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

Julia Ward Howe
From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...

Julia Ward Howe
There is no hell like that of a selfish heart, and there is no misfortune so great as that of not being able to make a sacrifice. These two thoughts come to me strongly this morning. It is something to have learned these truths so that we can never again doubt them.

Julia Ward Howe
I need not stand here to repeat any definition of what religion is. I think you will all say that it is aspiration, the pursuit of the divine in the human; the sacrifice of everything to duty for the sake of God and of humanity and of our own individual dignity.

Julia Ward Howe
I have seen him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps
They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps,
I have read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,
His Day is marching on.

Julia Ward Howe
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat.
Oh! be swift my soul to answer him, be jubilant my feet!
Our God is marching on.

Julia Ward Howe
Life is like a cup of tea, the sugar is all at the bottom!

Julia Ward Howe
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

Julia Ward Howe
Every life has its actual blanks, which the ideal must fill up, or which else remain bare & profitless forever.

Julia Ward Howe
He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is wisdom to the mighty, he is succour to the brave,
So the world shall be his footstool, and the soul of Time his slave,
Our God is marching on.

Julia Ward Howe
Arise then... women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!

Julia Ward Howe
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

Julia Ward Howe
Weave no more silks, ye Lyons looms,
To deck our girls for gay delights!
The crimson flower of battle blooms,
And solemn marches fill the nights.

Julia Ward Howe
Familiarity so dulls the edge of perception as to make us least acquainted with things forming part of our daily life.

Julia Ward Howe
The broken eggshell of a civilization which time has hatched and devoured.

Julia Ward Howe
It has been strange to me to return to life and to feel that I have any sympathy with human beings, after the long interval of quiet and indifference which succeeded my marriage.

Julia Ward Howe
In Virgil's account of the good housewife, who rises early in order to measure out the work of the household, and in Solomon's description of the thrifty woman of his time, one sees the value set upon feminine industry and economy in times far removed from our own.

Julia Ward Howe
The strokes of the pen need deliberation as much as the sword needs swiftness.

Julia Ward Howe
Before I say anything on my own account, I want to take the word Christianity back to Christ himself, back to that mighty heart whose pulse seems to throb through the world today, that endless fountain of charity out of which I believe has come all true progress and all civilization that deserves the name. As a woman I do not wish to dwell upon any trait of exclusiveness in the letter which belongs to a time when such exclusiveness perhaps could not be helped, and which may have been put in where it was not expressed. I go back to that great Spirit which contemplated a sacrifice for the whole of humanity. That sacrifice is not one of exclusion, but of an infinite and endless and joyous inclusion. And I thank God for it.

Julia Ward Howe
From this Parliament let some valorous, new, strong, and courageous influence go forth, and let us have here an agreement of all faiths for one good end, for one good thing— really for the glory of God, really for the sake of humanity from all that is low and animal and unworthy and undivine.

Julia Ward Howe
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Julia Ward Howe
The flag of our stately battles, not struggles of wrath and greed,
Its stripes were a holy lesson, its spangles a deathless creed:
'T was red with the blood of freemen and white with the fear of the foe;
And the stars that fight in their courses 'gainst tyrants its symbols know.

Julia Ward Howe
I only hope you may be able not only to listen, but also to hear me. Your charity must multiply my small voice and do some such miracle as was done when the loaves and fishes fed the multitude in the ancient tune which has just been spoken of.

Julia Ward Howe
The blind must not only be fed and housed and cared for; they must learn to make thir lives useful to the community.

Julia Ward Howe
It is not good for beauty that it should be a profession.

Julia Ward Howe
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.

Julia Ward Howe
"We can teach no virtues we do not practice," occurred to me this afternoon; for without learning by experience how a virtue is acquired, how can we teach any one to acquire it? I thought of this in connection with the experience of undutiful children. By the working of this natural cause, they will not make their own children dutiful. Read in Luke of the angel which appeared to Christ in Gethsemane, strengthening Him. We all see this angel when we say truly, "Thy will, not mine, be done."

Julia Ward Howe
I think nothing is religion which puts one individual absolutely above others, and surely nothing is religion which puts one sex above another. Religion is primarily our relation to the Supreme, to God himself. It is for him to judge; it is for him to say where we belong, who is highest and who is not; of that we know nothing. And any religion which will sacrifice a certain set of human beings for the enjoyment or aggrandizement or advantage of another is no religion. It is a thing which may be allowed, but it is against true religion. Any religion which sacrifices women to the brutality of men is no religion.

Julia Ward Howe
While the war was still in progress, I was visited by a sudden feeling of the cruel and unnecessary character of the contest. It seemed to me a return to barbarism, the issue having been one which might easily have been settled without bloodshed. The question forced itself upon me, "Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?" I had never thought of this before. The august dignity of motherhood and its terrible responsibilities now appeared to me in a new aspect, and I could think of no better way of expressing my sense of these than that of sending forth an appeal to womanhood throughout the world, which I then and there composed.

Julia Ward Howe