John Greenleaf Whittier, 1807 - 1892
1887 photo from Library of Congress
Born: 17 December 1807, Haverhill, Massachusetts
Died: 7 September 1892, Hampton Falls, New Hampshire
Raised in a Quaker family on a marginal farm, the frail boy was unsuited to the hard work and couldn't see the difference between ripe and unripe strawberries. His early education came largely from rereading his fathers six books on Quakerism. His sister submitted a poem to a newspaper; its editor, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, saw potential and encouraged the young poet to attend Haverhill Academy. He learned shoemaking to pay his tuition, served as a teacher himself in a neighboring town, and paid part of his tuition in produce from the farm. Garrison arranged for Whittier to serve as editor of two weeklies at Boston, Massachusetts and, in 1830, the New England Weekly Review of Hartford, Connecticut. Having taken a stance against slavery he ran for Congress in 1832, suffered a nervous breakdown, and spent the next 35 years speaking, writing, and lobbying for the cause. In 1836 he sold the family farm and lived with his sisters and mother at Amesbury, Massachusetts for the rest of his life. During this period he generally worked as an editor, and most of his poetry and prose were dedicated to the end of slavery, but after the Thirteenth Amendment passed in 1865 he turned to less political topics in his poetry and finally had significant financial success with Snow-Bound, published in 1966. After that, all of his poetry sold well in collections and he became known as one of the five "Fireside Poets", the New Englanders whose popularity first rivaled British poets.
Biography from Wikipedia and Suite 101
Additional quotes from Wikiquote. Wikiquote entries are often "sourced" and may include items longer than those included here, particularly for poets, lyricists, and dramatists.
John Greenleaf Whittier quotes:
Quotes found : 47 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 4) 1 2 3 4 Next
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- A 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. permalink
John Greenleaf Whittier - A true life is at once interpreter and proof of the gospel. permalink
John Greenleaf Whittier - Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress-trees
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play! permalink
John Greenleaf Whittier - All the windows of my heart I open to the day. permalink
John Greenleaf Whittier - And let these altars, wreathed with flowers
And piled with fruits, awake again
Thanksgivings for the golden hours,
The early and the latter rain! permalink
John Greenleaf Whittier - As a small businessperson, you have no greater leverage than the truth. permalink
John Greenleaf Whittier - Autumn, in his leafless bowers, is waiting for the winter's snow. permalink
John Greenleaf Whittier - Beauty seen is never lost, God's colors all are fast. permalink
John Greenleaf Whittier - Before me, even as behind, God is, and all is well. permalink
John Greenleaf Whittier - Beneath the winter's snow lie germs of summer flowers. permalink
John Greenleaf Whittier - Better heresy of doctrine than heresy of heart. permalink
John Greenleaf Whittier - Blow, bugles of battle, the marches of peace;
East, west, north, and south let the long quarrel cease;
Sing the song of great joy that the angels began,
Sing the glory to God and of good-will to man! permalink
John Greenleaf Whittier - Falsehoods which we spurn today,
were the truths of long ago. permalink
John Greenleaf Whittier - For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: 'It might have been.' permalink
John Greenleaf Whittier - For somehow, not only at Christmas, but all the long year through,
The joy that you give to others is the joy that comes back to you. permalink
John Greenleaf Whittier
Quotes found : 47 — (15 per page, this is page 1 of 4) 1 2 3 4 Next
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