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Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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“Our lives are songs. God writes the words, / And we set them to music at pleasure; / And the song grows glad, or sweet, or sad, / As we choose to fashion the measure.”
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“Back on its golden hinges / The gate of Memory swings, / And my heart goes into the garden / And walks with the olden things.”
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“This world is a sad, sad place I know; / And what soul living can doubt it. / But it will not lessen the want and woe, / To be always singing about it.”
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“All roads that lead to God are good.”
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“There is no balking Genius. Only death / Can silence it — or hinder.”
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“... critics and reviewers do not use / Their precious ammunition to abuse / A worthless work. That, left alone, they know / Will find its proper level; and they aim / Their batteries at rising works which claim / Too much of public notice.”
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“For life is a poem to leisurely read, / And the joy of a journey lies not in its speed.”
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“All love that has not friendship for its base, / Is like a mansion built upon the sand. / Love, to endure life's sorrow and earth's woe, / Needs friendship's solid masonwork below.”
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“Let there be many windows to your soul, / ... Not the narrow pane / Of one poor creed can catch the radiant rays / That shine from countless sources.”
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“Laugh and the world laughs with you, / Weep and you weep alone. / For the sad old earth / must borrow its mirth, / It has trouble enough of its own.”
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“No question is ever settled / Until it is settled right.”
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“Day's sweetest moments are at dawn.”
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“Whatever comes, this too shall pass away.”
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“I hold it true that thoughts are things / Endowed with bodies, breath, and wings, / And that we send them forth to fill / The world with good results — or ill.”
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“Talk health. The dreary, never-ending tale / Of mortal maladies is worn and stale; / You cannot charm or interest or please / By harping on that minor chord disease. / Say you are well, or all is well with you, / And God shall hear your words and make them true.”
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“Talk happiness. The world is sad enough / Without your woe. No path is wholly rough. / Look for the places that are smooth and clear ...”
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“The splendid discontent of God / With chaos, made the world, / ... / And from the discontent of man / The world's best progress springs.”
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“Passion is what the sun feels for the earth / When harvests ripen into golden birth.”
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“Love much. Earth has enough of bitter in it.”
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“One of us two must sometime face existence / Alone with memories that but sharpen pain. / ... / One of us two shall find all life, all beauty, / All joy on earth, a tale forever done; / Shall know henceforth that life means only duty. / O God! O God! have pity on that one!”
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“As the dead year is clasped by a dead December, / So let your dead sins with your dead days lie.”
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“Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes ...”
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“Whatever is — is best.”
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“The world is a vaporous jest at best, / Tossed off by the gods in laughter; / And a cruel attempt at wit were it. / If nothing better came after.”
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“Give us that grand word 'woman' once again, / And let's have done with 'lady'; one's a term / Full of fine force, strong, beautiful, and firm, / Fit for the noblest use of tongue or pen; / And one's a word for lackeys.”
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“It is easy enough to be pleasant / When life flows by like a song, / But the man worth while is the one who will smile / When everything goes dead wrong.”
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“So many gods, so many creeds, / So many paths that wind and wind / While just the art of being kind, / Is all the sad world needs.”
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“... the two kinds of people on earth I mean, / Are the people who lift and the people who lean.”
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“With every deed you are sowing a seed, though the harvest you may not see.”
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“I think of death as some delightful journey / That I shall take when all my tasks are done ... ”
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“Time owes me such a heavy debt; / How can he ever make things right?”
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“There is new strength, repose of mind and inspiration in fresh apparel. ”
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“... love moves the world along.”
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“I do not question what the years portend — / Of good or ill, whatever wind may blow; / It is enough, enough for me to know / I shall be given courage to the end.”
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“Love is the only duty that we know ...”
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“Oh, dark, inevitable and awful day, / When one of us must go and one must stay! ”
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“When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow, / We hear sweet voices ringing from lands of long ago, / And etched on vacant places / Are half-forgotten faces / Of friends we used to cherish, and loves we used to know ...”
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“We must not force events, but rather make / The heart soil ready for their coming, as / The earth spreads carpets for the feet of Spring.”
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“Change is the watchword of progression. When / We tire of well-worn ways, we seek for new. / This restless craving in the souls of men / Spurs them to climb, and seek the mountain view.”
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“It has always been my belief that children inherit the suppressed tendencies of their parents. A clergyman's son frequently shows abnormal tastes for the pleasures that his father denied himself ...”
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“A day which passed without a poem from my pen I considered lost and misused.”
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“A weed is but an unloved flower!”
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“You may choose your word like a connoisseur, / And polish it up with art, / But the word that sways, and stirs, and stays, / Is the word that comes from the heart.”
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“I value more than I despise / My tendency to sin, / Because it helps me sympathize / With all my tempted kin.”
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“Thank Fate for foes! I hold mine dear / As valued friends. He cannot know / The zest of life who runneth here / His earthly race without a foe.”
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“Content is not the pathway to great deeds.”
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“... good music is wine turned to sound.”
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“At times I am the mother of the world; / And mine seem all its sorrows, and its fears.”
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“'Tis a curious fact that a generous act / Brings leisure and luck to a day.”
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“A thousand creeds have come and gone; / But what is that to you or me? / Creeds are but branches of a tree, / The root of love lives on and on.”
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“I am the voice of the voiceless; / Through me the dumb shall speak; / Till the deaf world's ear be made to hear / The cry of the wordless weak. / ... / And I am my brother's keeper, / And I will fight his fight, / And speak the word for beast and bird, / Till the world shall set things right.”
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“That which we most desire, / With understanding, we at last obtain, / In part or whole. I hold there is no rain, / No deluge, that can quench a heavenly fire.”
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“Contentment comes when sought, / While Happiness pursued was never caught.”
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“The human race / Has climbed on protest.”
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“To sin by silence, when we should protest, / Makes cowards out of men. ”
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“I fling my past behind me like a robe / Worn threadbare in the seams, and out of date. / I have outgrown it.”
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“Have you heard of the terrible family They, / And the dreadful venomous things They say?”
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“The rankling wound which aches and thrills / Is dealt by hands we love.”
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“The only folks who really wound / Are those we love the best.”
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“One ship drives east and another drives west / With the selfsame winds that blow. / 'Tis the set of sails and not the gales / Which tells us the way to go.”
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“There is room in the halls of pleasure / For a large and lordly train, / But one by one we must all file on / Through the narrow aisles of pain.”
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“Don’t look for flaws as you go through life; / And even when you find them, / It is wise and kind to be somewhat blind, / And look for the virtue behind them.”
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, U.S. writer, poet, journalist
(1859 - 1919)