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15 Joaquin Miller Quotes

Joaquin Miller delivers bold, sky-filled musings on faith and nature that echo with a fierce, almost prophetic voice.

Joaquin Miller quotes

  1. I saw the lightning's gleaming rod Reach forth and write upon the sky The awful autograph of God.

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  2. The very clouds have wept and died And only God is in the sky.

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  3. In men whom men condemn as ill I find so much of goodness still. In men whom men pronounce divine I find so much of sin and blot I do not dare to draw a line Between the two, where God has not.

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Also attributed

  1. Man's books are but a climbing stair, Lain step by step, like stairs of stone; The stairway here, the temple there - Man's lampad honor, and his trust, The God who called him from the dust.

  2. All honor to him who shall win the prize. The world has cried for a thousand years. But to him who tries and fails and dies, I give great honor and glory and tears.

  3. Men say, "By pride the angels fell from heaven." By pride they reached a place from which they fell!

  4. Man's books are but man's alphabet, Beyond and on his lessons lie - The lessons of the violet, The large gold letters of the sky; The love of beauty, blossomed soil, The large content, the tranquil toil: The toil that nature ever taught, The patient toil, the constant stir, The toil of seas where shores are wrought, The toil of Christ, the carpenter; The toil of God incessantly By palm-set land or frozen sea.

  5. The biggest dog has been a pup.

  6. He gained a world; he gave that world Its grandest lesson: "On! sail on!"

  7. The soul that feeds on books alone - I count that soul exceeding small That lives alone by book and creed, - A soul that has not learned to read.

  8. I throw a kiss across the sea, I drink the winds as drinking wine, And dream they all are blown from thee, I catch the whisper'd kiss of thine.

  9. O woman, born first to believe us; Yea, also born first to forget; Born first to betray and deceive us, Yet first to repent and regret.

  10. There are many To-morrows, my Love, my Love, There is only one To-day.

  11. That man who lives for self alone, Lives for the meanest mortal known.

  12. Physiognomy is often a great falsifier, though as a rule it is honest enough.