John Greenleaf Whittier

Quotes by John Greenleaf Whittier

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Went drearily singing the chore-girl small, Draping each hive with a shred of black.

Oh, for boyhood's painless play, sleep that wakes in laughing day, health that mocks the doctor's rules, knowledge never learned of schools.

And the song she was singing ever since In my ear sounds on:—...

The saddest thing of word or pen, To know the things that might have been.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, "It might have been!"

How dwarfed against his manliness she sees the poor pretension, the wants, the aims, the follies, born of fashion and convention!

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'

These Flemish pictures of old days; Sit with me by the homestead hearth,...

No longer forward nor behindI look in hope or fearBut, grateful, take the good I findThe best of now and here.

Of all that Orient lands can vaunt, of marvels with our own competing, the strangest is the Haschish plant, and what will follow on its eating.

'I'm sorry that I spelt the word: I hate to go above you,...

All else is gone; from those great eyes The soul has fled:...

Yet here at least an earnest sense Of human right and weal is shown;...

Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West, From North and South, come the pilgrim and guest, When the gray-haired New Englander sees round his board The old broken links of affection restored, When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more, And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before. What moistens the lips and what brightens the eye? What calls back the past, like the rich pumpkin pie?

The sooner we recognize the fact that the mercy of the Almighty extends to every creature endowed with life, the better it will be for us as men and Christians.

Of all sad words of tongue and pen the saddest are these, what might have been.

In any man who dies there dies with him, his first snow and kiss and fight... Not people die but worlds die in them.

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