Inspirational Quotes by John Greenleaf Whittier
“For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: "It might have been!”
― John Greenleaf Whittier ,
from Maud Muller
“So all night long the storm roared on: The morning broke without a sun; In tiny spherule traced with lines Of Nature’s geometric signs, In starry flake, and pellicle, All day the hoary meteor fell; And, when the second morning shone, We looked upon a world unknown, On nothing we could call our own. Around the glistening wonder bent The blue walls of the firmament, No cloud above, no earth below,— A universe of sky and snow!”
“Other friends have flown before — On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.” Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”
“At what point does a man turn into a monster? I don’t believe that it’s when he does horrible things, but when he accepts that he’s able to do them, and that he does them well.”
“The continuity of life is never broken; the river flows onward and is lost to our sight, but under its new horizon it carries the same waters which it gathered under ours, and its unseen valleys are made glad by the offerings which are borne down to them from the past,--flowers, perchance, the germs of which its own waves had planted on the banks of Time.”
“Tell me truly, I implore-- Is there-- is there balm in Gilead?--tell me--tell me, I implore!”
“As life runs on, the road grows strange With faces new, and near the end The milestones into headstones change, ’Neath every one a friend.”
“And sweet and far as from a star, replied a voice which shall not cease, till drowning all the noise of war, it sings the blessed song of peace”
“Clothe with life the weak intent, Let me be the thing I meant ...”
topics: inspirational
“Nothing before, nothing behind; The steps of faith Fall on the seeming void, and find The Rock beneath.”
“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting— “Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!” Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
“Actually, I do have doubts, all the time. Any thinking person does. There are so many sides to every question.”
“And still we love the evil cause And of the just effect complain; We tread upon life's broken laws And murmur at our self-inflicted pain.”
topics: pain-evil-laws-sadness-love
“I know not where his islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond his love and care.”
“Did you tackle that trouble that came your way With a resolute heart and cheerful? Or hide your face from the light of day With a craven soul and fearful? Oh, a trouble's a ton, or a trouble's an ounce, Or a trouble is what you make it. And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts, But only how did you take it? (Excerpt from "How Did You Die?")”
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,”
Group of Brands
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1807-1892
John Greenleaf Whittier was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States.
Although he received little formal education, he was an avid reader who studied his father's six books on Quakerism until their teachings became the foundation of his ideology. Whittier was heavily influenced by the doctrines of his religion, particularly its stress on humanitarianism, compassion, and social responsibility.
Whittier produced two collections of antislavery poetry: Poems Written during the Progress of the Abolition Question in the United States, between 1830 and 1838 and Voices of Freedom (1846). He was an elector in the presidential election of 1860 and of 1864, voting for Abraham Lincoln both times.
The passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 ended both slavery and his public cause, so Whittier turned to other forms of poetry for the remainder of his life.