Top 150 Ella Wheeler Wilcox Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 3 of 4

101. “God, what a world, if men in street and mart felt that same kinship of the human heart which makes them, in the face of fire and flood, rise to the meaning of true brotherhood.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

102. “Love is the only duty that we know...”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

103. “No one will grieve because your lips are dumb.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

104. “Talk faith. The world is better off without, Your uttered ignorance and morbid doubt.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

105. “Wiped the cold dew-drops from his cheek And sought the mourner’s side again. “Once more, dear lady, I must speak: Your last remaining son was slain Just at the closing of the fight; Twas he who sent me here to-night.” “God knows,” the man said afterward, “The fight itself was not so hard.””

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

106. “Time sped. And the poet through sorrow Became like his suffering kind. Again he toiled over his poems To lighten the grief of his mind...”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

107. “Let us clear a little space, And make Love a burial-place. He is dead, dear, as you see, And he wearies you and me.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

108. “Love is as bitter as the dregs of sin, As sweet as clover-honey in its cell; Love is the password whereby souls get in To Heaven – the gate that leads, sometimes, to Hell.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

109. “And she has a thousand virtues and not one acknowledged sin, But she is the sort of person you could liken to a pin. And she pricks you, and she sticks you, in a way that can’t be said, When you seek for what has hurt you, why, you cannot find the head.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

110. “There was hell in her eyes! She was worn and jaded Her soul is at war with the life she has led. As I looked on that face so strangely faded I wonder God did not strike me dead...”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

111. “I knew it the first of the summer, I knew it the same at the end, That you and your love were plighted, But couldn’t you be my friend?”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

112. “Oh! I know this truth, if I know no other, That passionate Love is Pain’s own mother.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

113. “The sin and the shame and the sorrow, The crime and the want and the woe That are born there in your workshop, No hand can paint, you know...”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

114. “I’m sorry for the anguished hearts that break with passion’s strain, But I’m sorrier for the poor starved souls that never knew love’s pain, Who hunger on through barren years not tasting joys they crave, For sadder far is such a lot than weeping o’er a grave.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

115. “For an actress to be a success, she must have the face of Venus, the brains of a Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of a Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

116. “Love is the only thing that pays for birth, Or makes death welcome. Oh, dear God above This beautiful but sad, perplexing earth, Pity the hearts that know – or know not – Love!”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

117. “With care, and skill, and cunning art, She parried Time’s malicious dart, And kept the years at bay, Till passion entered in her heart and aged her in a day!”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

118. “No path is wholly rough.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

119. “And he who has dwelt with his heart alone, Hears all the music in friendship’s tone. So better and better I comprehend How sorrow ever would be our friend.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

120. “Whatever is a cruel wrong, Whatever is unjust, The honest years that speed along Will trample in the dust...”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

121. “There is no balking genius. Only death can silence it or hinder.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

122. “Even so We find the sea of sorrow. Black as night The sullen surface meets our frightened gaze, As down we sink to darkness and despair...”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

123. “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...”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

124. “O skies, be calm! O winds, blow free – Blow all my ships safe home to me! But if thou sendest some a-wrack, To never more come sailing back, Send any – all that skim the sea, But bring my love-ship home to me.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

125. “High in the heavens I saw the moon this morning, Albeit the sun shone bright; Unto my soul it spoke, in voice of warning, “Remember Night!””

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

126. “It stands in the light transfigured, It speaks from the heights above, “Each Soul Is Its Own Redeemer; There Is No Law But Love.””

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

127. “We waste half our strength in a useless regretting; We sit by old tombs in the dark too long.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

128. “Always continue to climb.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

129. “It has ever been since time began, and ever will be, till time lose breath, that love is a mood – no more – to man, and love to a woman is life or death.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

130. “It is a common fate – a woman’s lot – To waste on one the riches of her soul, Who takes the wealth she gives him, but cannot Repay the interest, and much less the whole.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

131. “Better to wait and yearn, and still to wait, And die at last with unappeased desire, Than live to be the jest of such a fate, For that is my conception of hell-fire.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

132. “Do not miss the purpose of this life, and do not wait for circumstance to mold or change you fate.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

133. “Give her not greatness. For great souls must stand Alone and lonely in this little world: Cleft rocks that show the great Creator’s hand, Thither by earthquakes hurled...”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

134. “The man who radiates good cheer, who makes life happier wherever he meets it, is always a man of vision and faith.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

135. “I like the roar of cities. In the mart, Where busy toilers strive for place and gain, I seem to read humanity’s great heart, And share its hopes, its pleasures, and its pain.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

136. “While forced to dwell apart from thy dear face, Love, robed like sorrow, led me by the hand And taught my doubting heart to understand That which has puzzled all the human race...”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

137. “Ah, lady! it is hardly what you thought it, This life of luxury and social power; You gave yourself as principal, and bought it, But God extracts the interest hour by hour.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

138. “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...”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

139. “The passion you forbade my lips to utter Will not be silenced. You must hear it in The sullen thunders when they roll and mutter: And when the tempest nears, with wail and din, I know your calm forgetfulness is broken, And to your heart you whisper, “He has spoken.””

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

140. “Time is the best avenger.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

141. “Then I turned to him commanding That he go the way he came, whence he came. But he answered me in sorrow, “May the Past not seek to borrow From the Present without blame – Just one memory from its store, Ere it goes to come no more, Back the pathway that it came, whence it came?””

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

142. “It is time that outraged public sentiment cry out in detestation of the outrages committed in the name of religion.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

143. “There is nothing ridiculous in love.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

144. “I was as pure as the morning When I first looked on your face; I knew I never could reach you In your high, exalted place...”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

145. “You will be surprised to find how much that has seemed hopelessly disagreeable possesses either an instructive or an amusing side.” from “The Heart of the New Thought” 1902.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

146. “I think I never passed so sad an hour, Dear friend, as that one at the church to-night. The edifice from basement to the tower Was one resplendent blaze of coloured light...”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

147. “Content is not the pathway to great deeds.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

148. “A day which passed without a poem from my pen I considered lost and misused.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

149. “All the past is not worth one today.”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

150. “How happy they are, in all seeming, How gay, or how smilingly proud, How brightly their faces are beaming, These people who make up the crowd!”

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox