328 Quotes by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Love is the only thing that pays for birth, Or makes death welcome. Oh, dear God above This beautiful but sad, perplexing earth, Pity the hearts that know – or know not – Love!

It has always been my belief that children inherit the suppressed tendencies of their parents. A clergyman’s son frequently shows abnormal tastes for the pleasures that his father denied himself...

It is a common fate – a woman’s lot – To waste on one the riches of her soul, Who takes the wealth she gives him, but cannot Repay the interest, and much less the whole.

Love is as bitter as the dregs of sin, As sweet as clover-honey in its cell; Love is the password whereby souls get in To Heaven – the gate that leads, sometimes, to Hell.

Oh! not for the great departed, Who formed our country’s laws, And not for the bravest-hearted, Who died in freedom’s cause, And not for some living hero To whom all bend the knee, My muse would raise her song of praise – But for the man to be...

Then I turned to him commanding That he go the way he came, whence he came. But he answered me in sorrow, “May the Past not seek to borrow From the Present without blame – Just one memory from its store, Ere it goes to come no more, Back the pathway that it came, whence it came?”

Oh! I know this truth, if I know no other, That passionate Love is Pain’s own mother.

It is easy to tell the toiler How best he can carry his pack But no one can rate a burden’s weight Until it has been on his back.

I like the roar of cities. In the mart, Where busy toilers strive for place and gain, I seem to read humanity’s great heart, And share its hopes, its pleasures, and its pain.