255 Quotes by John Greenleaf Whittier

What is good looking, as Horace Smith remarks, but looking good? Be good, be womanly, be gentle,-generous in your sympathies, heedful of the well-being of all around you; and, my word for it, you will not lack kind words of admiration.

Swan flocks of lilies shoreward lying, In sweetness, not in music, dying.

There is religion in everything around us, - a calm and holy religion in the unbreathing things of Nature, which man would do well to imitate.

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!

A grateful loving heart carries with it, under every parallel of latitude, the warmth and light of the tropics. It plants its Eden in the wilderness and solitary place, and sows with flowers the gray desolation of rock and mosses.

Along the river's summer walk, The withered tufts of asters nod; And trembles on its arid stalk the hoar plum of the golden-rod.

The great eventful Present hides the Past; but through the din Of its loud life hints and echoes from the life behind steal in.

God should be most where man is least: So, where is neither church nor priest, And never rag nor form of creed To clothe the nakedness of need,- Where farmer folk in silence meet,- I turn my bell-unsummoned feet; I lay the critic's glass aside, I tread upon my lettered pride, And, lowest-seated, testify To the oneness of humanity; Confess the universal want, And share whatever Heaven may grant. He findeth not who seeks his own, The soul is lost that's saved alone.

Romance is always young.