The craven’s fear is but selfishness, like his merriment.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Cowardice, Fear
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
All the windows of my heart I open to the day.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Carpe-diem
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
Topics: Faith, Divinity, God
Somehow, not only for Christmas, But all the long year through, The joy that you give to others, Is the joy that comes back to you. And the more you spend in blessing, The poor and lonely and sad, The more of your heart’s possessing, Returns to you glad.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Christmas, Joy
When faith is lost, when honor dies, the man is dead.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Man, Faith
Before me, even as behind, God is, and all is well.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: God, Faith, Divinity
The windows of my soul I throw
Wide open to the sun.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Light
The steps of faith fall on the seeming void, but find the rock beneath.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Faith
One brave deed makes no hero.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Heroism, Heroes/Heroism, Heroes
To be saved is only this,—salvation from our own selfishness.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Selfishness
Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Action
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
Oh, brother man, fold to thy heart thy brother; where pity dwells, the peace of God is there.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
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, Divinity, God
For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: “It might have been!”
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Sadness
The tints of autumn—a mighty flower garden, blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, frost.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Autumn
Who never climbs as rarely falls.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Success
Clothe with life the weak intent, let me be the thing I meant.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
The simple heart that freely asks in love, obtains.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Prayer, Work
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
Tradition wears a snowy beard.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Tradition
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
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
His daily prayer, far better understood in acts than in words, was simply doing good.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Goodness
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
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: Aging, Age
Autumn, in his leafless bowers, is waiting for the winter’s snow.
—John Greenleaf Whittier
Topics: Autumn
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
Topics: Resilience
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
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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