Say you are well, or all is well with you,
And God shall hear your words and make them true.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Attitude
Laugh and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Laughter, Punctuality, Friendship, Sadness
So many gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind,
While just the art of being kind
Is all the sad world needs.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Kindness
Come, cuddle your head on my shoulder, dear,
Your head like the golden-rod,
And we will go sailing away from here
To the beautiful land of Nod.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Sleep
The truest greatness lies in being kind, the truest wisdom in a happy mind.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Cheerfulness
There is new strength, repose of mind, and inspiration in fresh apparel.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Inspiration
The splendid discontent of God
With chaos, made the world…
And from the discontent of man
The world’s best progress springs.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Give us that grand word “woman” once again, and let’s have done with “lady”; one’s a term full of fine force, strong, beautiful, and firm, fit for the noblest use of tongue or pen; and one’s a word for lackeys.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Women
Day’s sweetest moments are at dawn.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
In the long run all love is paid by love,
Though undervalued by the hosts of earth;
The great eternal Government above
Keeps strict account and will redeem its worth.
Give thy love freely; do not count the cost;
So beautiful a thing was never lost
In the long run.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Love
Change is the watchword of progression. When we tire of well-worn ways, we seek for new. This restless craving in the souls of men spurs them to climb, and to seek the mountain view.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Change
With every rising of the sun, Think of your life as just begun. The past has shrived and buried deep All yesterdays; there let them sleep. Concern yourself with but today, Woo it, and teach it to obey Your will and wish. Since time began Today has been the friend of man; But in his blindness and his sorrow, He looks to yesterday and tomorrow. You, and today! a soul sublime, And the great pregnant hour of time, With God himself to bind the twain! Go forth, I say-attain, attain! With God himself to bind the twain!
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Pregnancy
He who leads
Must then be strong and hopeful as the dawn
That rises unafraid and full of joy
Above the blackness of the darkest night.
He must be kind to every living thing;
Kind as the Krishna, Buddha and the Christ,
And full of love for all created life.
Oh, not in war shall his great prowess lie,
Nor shall he find his pleasure in the chase.
Too great for slaughter, friend of man and beast,
Touching the borders of the Unseen Realms
And bringing down to earth their mystic fires
To light our troubled pathways, wise and kind
And human to the core, so shall he be,
The coming leader of the coming time.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Leadership
There’s one sad truth in life I’ve found
While journeying east and west –
The only folks we really wound
Are those we love the best.
We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Relationships, Hurting, Love
Let me, tonight look back across the span
Twixt dawn and dark, and to my conscience say-
Because of some good act to beast or human-
The world is better that I lived today.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Kindness
Talk happiness. The world is sad enough without your woe. No path is wholly rough.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
It has ever been since time began, and ever will be, till time lose breath, that love is a mood—no more—to man, and love to a woman is life or death.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Love
It is easy enough to be virtuous When nothing tempts you to stray; When without or within No voice of sin Is luring your soul away. But it is only a negative virtue until it is tried by fire. For the soul that is worth the treasures of the earth is the soul that resists desire.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Virtue
One ship sails east and another sails west
With the self-same winds that blow.
Tis the set of the sail and not the gale
Which determines the way they go.
As the winds of the sea are the ways of fate
As we voyage along through life,
Tis the act of the soul that determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Goals
Let there be many windows to your soul, that all the glory of the world may beautify it.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Light
You like buttercups, dewy sweet,
And crocuses, framed in snow;
I like roses, born of the heat,
And the red carnation’s glow.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Flowers
All love that has not friendship for its base, is like a mansion built upon the sand.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Love, Friendship, Friends and Friendship
Back on its golden hinges
The gate of Memory swings,
And my heart goes into the garden
And walks with the olden things.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Memory
No fate could rob us of our own—
No circumstance can make it less;
What time removes was but a loan,
For what was ours we still possess.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Character
Whatever comes, this too shall pass away.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Time
Though smooth be the heartless prayer, no ear in heaven will mind it; And the finest phrase falls dead, if there is no feeling behind it.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Prayer
With care, and skill, and cunning art, She parried Time’s malicious dart, And kept the years at bay, Till passion entered in her heart and aged her in a day!
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Age, Aging
I prayed for riches and achieved success,
All that I touched turned into gold. Alas!
My cares were greater, and my peace was less
When that wish came to pass.
I prayed for glory; and heard my name
Sung by sweet children and by hoary men.
But ah! the hurts, the hurts that came with fame!
I was not happy then.
I prayed for love, and had my soul’s desire,
Through quivering heart and body and through brain
There swept the flame of its devouring fire;
And there the scars remain.
I prayed for a contented mind. At length
Great light upon my darkened spirit burst,
Great peace fell on me, also, and great strength.
Oh! had that prayer been first!
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Prayer
A pat on the back is only a few vertebrae removed from a kick in the pants, but is miles ahead in results.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Praise, Inspiration, Business
It is easy enough to be pleasant, When life flows by like a song. But the man worthwhile is the one who can smile, when everything goes dead wrong. For the test of the heart is troubled, And it always comes with the years. And the smiles that is worth the praises of earth is the smile that shines through tears.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Topics: Attitude, Adversity, Courage, Bravery
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Nathaniel Parker Willis American Poet, Playwright
- Emily Dickinson American Poet
- Gertrude Stein American Writer
- Theodore Roethke American Poet
- Edgar Allan Poe American Poet
- Witter Bynner American Poet
- Kimberly Johnson American Poet
- John Vance Cheney American Poet
- John Greenleaf Whittier American Poet, Abolitionist
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich American Writer
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