Before me, even as behind, God is, and all is well.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Divinity, Faith, God
The steps of faith fall on the seeming void, but find the rock beneath.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Faith
How dwarfed against his manliness she sees the poor pretension, the wants, the aims, the follies, born of fashion and convention!
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Men
The windows of my soul I throw
Wide open to the sun.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Light
The vain regret that steals above the wreck of squandered hours.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Repentance
All the windows of my heart I open to the day.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Carpe-diem
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
Clothe with life the weak intent, let me be the thing I meant.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
The smile of God is victory.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Victory, One liners
His daily prayer, far better understood in acts than in words, was simply doing good.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Goodness
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
Topics: Media
Oh, for boyhood’s painless play,
Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
Health that mocks the doctor’s rules,
Knowledge never learned of schools.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Remembrance, Reflection
Forever from the hand that takes one blessing from us, others fall; and soon or late, our Father makes his perfect recompense to all.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
But beauty seen is never lost,
God.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
The craven’s fear is but selfishness, like his merriment.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Cowardice, Fear
Autumn, in his leafless bowers, is waiting for the winter’s snow.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Autumn
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
Topics: Age, Aging
One brave deed makes no hero.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Heroes/Heroism, Heroism, Heroes
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.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Faith, God, Divinity
Tradition wears a snowy beard.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Tradition
Of all that Orient lands can vaunt, of marvels with our own competing, the strangest is the Haschish plant, and what will follow on its eating.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Drugs
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.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Belief, Faith
To be saved is only this,—salvation from our own selfishness.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Selfishness
Who never climbs as rarely falls.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Success
Beauty seen is never lost, God’s colors all are fast.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Beauty
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
Topics: Progress
No longer forward nor behind
I look in hope or fear;
But, grateful, take the good I find,
The best of now and here.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Here Greek and Roman find themselves alive along these crowded shelves; and Shakespeare treads again his stage, and Chaucer paints anew his age.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Libraries
Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Peace
Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Action
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- James Russell Lowell American Poet, Critic
- Emily Dickinson American Poet
- Edgar Allan Poe American Poet
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich American Writer
- Josiah Gilbert Holland American Editor, Novelist
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow American Poet
- Marge Piercy American Poet
- Gertrude Stein American Writer
- Theodore Roethke American Poet
- Witter Bynner American Poet
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