255 Quotes by John Greenleaf Whittier

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.

It is well for us if we have learned to listen to the sweet persuasion of the Beatitudes, but there are crises in all lives which require also the emphatic “Thou shalt not” of the decalogue which the founders wrote on the gateposts of their commonwealth.

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

The windows of my soul I throw Wide open to the sun.

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!

If we write at all, why not use our talents to the best advantage?

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

The dreariest spot in all the land to Death they set apart; with scanty grace from Nature’s hand, and none from that of Art.

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!