John Greenleaf Whittier Quotations

All the windows of my heart I open to the day.

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.

Tradition wears a snowy beard, romance is always young.

When faith is lost, when honor dies, the man is dead.

For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, 'It might have been'.

Before me, even as behind, God is, and all is well.

Beauty seen is never lost, God's colors all are fast.

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

I'll lift you and you lift me, and we'll both ascend together.

As a small businessperson, you have no greater leverage than the truth.

Peace hath higher tests of manhood, than battle ever knew.

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

And the more you spend in blessing The poor and lonely and sad, The more of your heart's possessing Returns to you glad.

The low green tent Whose curtain never outward swings.

O brother man! fold to thy heart thy brother; Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there; To worship rightly is to love each other, Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer.

The sun that brief December day Rose cheerless over hills of gray, And, darkly circled, gave at noon A sadder light than waning moon.

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

What is good looking, as Horace Smith remarks, but looking good? Be good, be womanly, be gentle,-generous in your sympathies, heedful of the well-being of all around you; and, my word for it, you will not lack kind words of admiration.

There is religion in everything around us, - a calm and holy religion in the unbreathing things of Nature, which man would do well to imitate.

A grateful loving heart carries with it, under every parallel of latitude, the warmth and light of the tropics. It plants its Eden in the wilderness and solitary place, and sows with flowers the gray desolation of rock and mosses.

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

God should be most where man is least: So, where is neither church nor priest, And never rag nor form of creed To clothe the nakedness of need,- Where farmer folk in silence meet,- I turn my bell-unsummoned feet; I lay the critic's glass aside, I tread upon my lettered pride, And, lowest-seated, testify To the oneness of humanity; Confess the universal want, And share whatever Heaven may grant. He findeth not who seeks his own, The soul is lost that's saved alone.

Thee lift me, and I lift thee, and together we ascend.

The saddest thing of word or pen, To know the things that might have been.

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.

The slave will be free. Democracy in America will yet be a glorious reality; and when the top-stone of that temple of freedom which our fathers left unfinished shall be brought forth with shoutings and cries of grace unto it, when our now drooping Liberty lifts up her head and prospers, happy will he be who can say, with John Milton, "Among those who have something more than wished her welfare, I, too, have my charter and freehold of rejoicing to me and my heirs."

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!

God's providence is not blind, but full of eyes.

No cloud above, no earth below, A universe of sky and snow.

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.

With smoking axle hot with speed, with steeds of fire and steam, Wide-waked To-day leaves Yesterday behind him like a dream. Still, from the hurrying train of Life, fly backward far and fast The milestones of the fathers, the landmarks of the past. But human hearts remain unchanged: the sorrow and the sin, The loves and hopes and fears of old, are to our own akin; And if, in tales our fathers told, the songs our mothers sung, Tradition wears a snowy beard, Romance is always young.

What miracle of weird transforming Is this wild work of frost and light, This glimpse of glory infinite?

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

Thine to work as well as pray, Clearing thorny wrongs away; Plucking up the weeds of sin, Letting heaven's warm sunshine in.

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.

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

So let it be in God's own might We gird us for the coming fight, And, strong in Him whose cause is ours In conflict with unholy powers, We grasp the weapons he has given,-- The Light, and Truth, and Love of Heaven.

Green calm below, blue quietness above.

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!

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 the glory to God and of good-will to man!

A faint blush melting through the light of thy transparent cheek like a rose-leaf bathed in dew.

With silence only as their benediction, God's angels come Where in the shadow of a great affliction, The soul sits dumb!

God gives quietness at last.

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.

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.

Behind the cloud the starlight lurks, Through showers the sunbeams fall; For God, who loveth all his works, Has left his Hope with all.

I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care.

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, Give ermined knaves their hour of crime; Yet have the future grand and great, The safe appeal of Truth to Time!

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.

We live by faith; but Faith is not the slave Of text and legend. Reason's voice and God's, Nature's and Duty's, never are at odds. What asks our Father of His children, save Justice and mercy and humility, A reasonable service of good deeds, Pure living, tenderness to human needs, Reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see The Master's footprints in our daily ways? No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife, But the calm beauty of an ordered life Whose very breathing is unworded praise! - A life that stands as all true lives have stood Firm-rooted in the faith that God is Good.

The laws of changeless justice bind oppressor and oppressed; and, close as sin and suffering joined we march to fate abreast.

Through the open door A drowsy smell of flowers -grey heliotrope And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette Comes fairly in, and silent chorus leads To the pervading symphony of Peace.

For still in mutual sufferance lies The secret of true living; Love scarce is love that never knows The sweetness of forgiving.

Nothing before, nothing behind; The steps of faith Fall on the seeming void, and find The Rock beneath.

And sweet and far as from a star, replied a voice which shall not cease, till drowning all the noise of war, it sings the blessed song of peace

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.

If thou of fortune be bereft, and in thy store there be but left two loaves, sell one, and with the dole, buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.

So all night long the storm roared on: The morning broke without a sun; In tiny spherule traced with lines Of Nature’s geometric signs, In starry flake, and pellicle, All day the hoary meteor fell; And, when the second morning shone, We looked upon a world unknown, On nothing we could call our own. Around the glistening wonder bent The blue walls of the firmament, No cloud above, no earth below,— A universe of sky and snow!

Flowers spring to blossom where she walks The careful ways of duty; Our hard, stiff lines of life with her Are flowing curves of beauty.

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

And step by step, since time began, I see the steady gain of man.

Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard! Heap high the golden corn! No richer gift has Autumn poured From out her lavish horn!

The sooner we recognize the fact that the mercy of the Almighty extends to every creature endowed with life, the better it will be for us as men and Christians.

The smile of God is victory.

And peace unweaponed conquers every wrong!

Love hath never known a law beyond its own sweet will.

Autumn, in his leafless bowers, is waiting for the winter's snow.

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.

Small leisure have the poor for grief.

Beneath the winter's snow lie germs of summer flowers.

He is wisest, who only gives, True to himself, the best he can: Who drifting on the winds of praise, The inward monitor obeys. And with the boldness that confuses fear Takes in the crowded sail, and lets his conscience steer.

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

The age is dull and mean. Men creep, Not walk; with blood too pale and tame To pay the debt they owe to shame; Buy cheap, sell dear; eat. drink, and sleep down-pillowed, deaf to moaning want; Pay tithes for soul-insurance; keep Six days to Mammon, one to Cant

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

No longer forward or behind I look in hope or fear, But grateful, take the good I find, The best of now and here.

But let the good old corn adorn The hills our fathers trod; Still let us, for his golden corn, Send up our thanks to God!

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

Life's sunniest hours are not without The shadow of some lingering doubt-- Amid its brightest joys will steal Spectres of evil yet to feel-- Its warmest love is blent with fears, Its confidence a trembling one-- Its smile--the harbinger of tears-- Its hope--the change of April's sun! A weary lot--in mercy given, To fit the chastened soul for heaven.

Despair is infidelity and death.

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

Yet, in the maddening maze of things, And tossed by storm and flood, To one fixed trust my spirit clings; I know that God is good!

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

When earth as if on evil dreams Looks back upon her wars, And the white light of Christ outstreams From the red disc of Mars, His fame, who led the stormy van Of battle, well may cease; But never that which crowns the man Whose victory was peace.

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

Nature speaks in symbols and in signs.

Like warp and woof all destinies Are woven fast, Linked in sympathy like the keys Of an organ vast. Pluck one thread, and the web ye mar; Break but one Of a thousand keys, and the paining jar Through all will run.

Few have borne unconsciously the spell of loveliness.

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!

We shape ourselves the joy or fear Of which the coming life is made, And fill our Future's atmosphere With sunshine or with shade.

A felon's cell-- The fittest earthly type of hell!

The Present, the Present is all thou hast For thy sure possessing; Like the patriarch's angel hold it fast Till it gives its blessing.

The hope of all earnest souls must be realized.

Falsehoods which we spurn today, were the truths of long ago.

The good is always beautiful, the beautiful is good!

A bending staff I would not break, A feeble faith I would not shake, Nor even rashly pluck away The error which some truth may stay, Whose loss might leave the soul without A shield against the shafts of doubt.

Better heresy of doctrine than heresy of heart.

A charmed life old goodness hath; the tares may perish, but the grain is not for death.

Press bravely onward! - not in vainYour generous trust in human kind;The good which bloodshed could not gainYour peaceful zeal shall find.

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

Time is hastening on, and we What our fathers are shall be,-- Shadow-shapes of memory! Joined to that vast multitude Where the great are but the good.