John Greenleaf Whittier Quotes

Love alone makes heavy burdens light and bears in equal balance things pleasing and displeasing. Love bears a heavy burden and does not feel it, and love makes bitter things tasteful and sweet.

There isn't a single human being who hasn't plenty to cry over, and the trick is to make the laughs outweigh the tears.

As this world was not intended to be a state of any great satisfaction or high enjoyment, so neither was it intended to be a mere scene of unhappiness and sorrow.

The house of laughter makes a house of woe.

A lot of people think they should be happy all the time. But the writer understands you need both. You need the whole piano: the richness of the whole human experience. Depression, suffering and anger are all part of being human.

It is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest light can come; it is only after extreme grief that the greatest joy can come.

And from the midst of cheerless gloom I passed to bright unclouded day.

Some are born to sweet delight, Some are born to endless night.

The word suffering is full and whole and perfect as a pierced heart, sweet, rushing and tender ... Suffering is the joy of someone about to be martyred, illumination of something given up as an offer.

To get everything you want is not a good thing. Disease makes health seem sweet. Hunger leads to the appreciation of being full-fed. Tiredness creates the enjoyment of resting

No joy so great but runneth to an end,No hap so hard but may in fine amend.

For wherein is life sweet to him who suffers grief?

There is no light without shadow, just as there is no happiness without pain.

Did you think you could have the good without the evil? Did you think you could have the joy without the sorrow? . . . . I have been thinking much about pain. How could I help it? . . . . Sooner or later, regardless of the wit of man, we have pain to face; a reality; a final inescapable, immutable fact of life. What poor souls, if we have then no philosophy to face it with! This pain will not last; it never has lasted. I'll think about what I am going to write tomorrow-not about me, not about my body.

One moment may with bliss repay Unnumbered hours of pain.

If all the skies were sunshine Our faces would be fain To feel once more upon them The cooling splash of rain. If all the world were music, Our hearts would often long For one sweet strain of silence, To break the endless song If life were always merry, Our souls would seek relief, And rest from weary laughter In the quiet arms of grief.

Sweet is a grief well ended.

While love takes on itself impossible tasks, yet it finds that love lightens all loads. It is the same burden that wings are to a bird, that sails are to a ship. Nothing is hard if done for love's sweet sake. The yoke of love is easy; the yoke of duty is hard. There is all the difference in the world between being drawn by love and being driven by duty. The task may be the same, but love makes everything light, and duty makes everything drudgery.

There is both joy and suffering on planet Earth because this beautiful world is a world of duality - a world of opposites. There is an opposite side to everything.

When our needs are permitted to grow to an extremity, and all visible hopes fail, then to have relief given wonderfully enhances the price of such a mercy

Sorrows must die with the joys they outnumber.

There is always a light within us that is free from all sorrow and grief, no matter how much we may be experiencing suffering.

The joy of love is too short, and the sorrow thereof, and what cometh thereof, dureth over long.

No grief has a right to immortality. That ground belongs to joy, to hope, to faith.