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.
John Greenleaf WhittierI know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care.
John Greenleaf WhittierFlowers spring to blossom where she walks The careful ways of duty; Our hard, stiff lines of life with her Are flowing curves of beauty.
John Greenleaf WhittierBathsheba! to whom none ever said scat- No worthier cat Ever sat on a mat, Or caught a rat. Requiescat!
John Greenleaf WhittierOh, talk as we may of beauty as a thing to be chiselled from marble or wrought out on canvas, speculate as we may upon its colors and outlines, what is it but an intellectual abstraction, after all? The heart feels a beauty of another kind; looking through the outward environment, it discovers a deeper and more real love-liness.
John Greenleaf Whittier