Joaquin Miller Quotes

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

15 quotes

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

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

  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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

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

  7. 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.

  8. The biggest dog has been a pup.

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

  10. 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.

  11. 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.

  12. 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.

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

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

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