223 quotes
From lower to the higher next,
Not to the top, is Nature’s text;
And embryo Good, to reach full stature,
Absorbs the Evil in its nature.
You've gut to git up airly
Ef you want to take in God.
The Biglow Papers (1848)
Before Man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.
On the Capture of Certain Fugitive Slaves Near Washington (1845)
We remain
Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past.
The surest plan to make a Man
Is, think him so.
The Biglow Papers (1848)
Under the yaller pines I house,
When sunshine makes 'em all sweet-scented,
An' hear among their furry boughs
The baskin' west-wind purr contented.
The Biglow Papers (1848)
Ye come and go incessant; we remain
Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past;
Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot,
Of faith so nobly realized as this.
The Cathedral (1870)
Stern men with empires in their brains.
The Biglow Papers (1848)
Wut's words to them whose faith an' truth
On war's red techstone rang true metal;
Who ventered life an' love an' youth
For the gret prize o' death in battle?
The Biglow Papers (1848)
Not failure, but low aim, is crime.
Under the Willows and Other Poems (1869)
The birch, most shy and lady-like of trees,
Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves,
And hints at her foregone gentilities
With some saved relics of her wealth of leaves.
Poems: Second Series (1848)
The future works out great men's destinies:
The present is enough for common souls,
Who, never looking forward, are indeed
Mere clay wherein the footprints of their age
Are petrified forever.
Democracy in its best sense is merely the letting in of light and air.
On Democracy (1884)
From the summit of power men no longer turn their eyes upward, but begin to look about them. Aspiration sees only one side of every question; possession, many.
Literary Essays, vol. II (1870)
New times demand new measures and new men;
The world advances, and in time outgrows
The laws which in our father's times were best;
And doubtless, after us, some purer scheme
Will be shaped out by wiser men than we,
Made wiser by the steady growth of truth.
Poems (1844)
They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.
Stanzas on Freedom (1843)
It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dangerous, but the revolts of intelligence.
Democracy and Other Addresses (1886)
For though he builds glorious temples, 'tis odd
He leaves never a doorway to get in a god.
A Fable for Critics (1848)
A marciful Providunce fashioned us holler
O' purpose thet we might our principles swaller.
The Biglow Papers (1848)
Our papers don't purtend to print on'y wut Guv'ment choose,
An' thet insures us all to git the very best o' noose.
The Biglow Papers (1848)