Edwin Markham Quotes
American - Poet April 23, 1852 - March 7, 1940


The crest and crowning of all good, Life's final star, is brotherhood.
Edwin Markham

There is a destiny which makes us brothers; none goes his way alone. All that we send into the lives of others comes back into our own.
Edwin Markham

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, the emptiness of ages in his face, and on his back the burden of the world.
Edwin Markham

Defeat may serve as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out.
Edwin Markham

It is better to rust out than wear out.
Edwin Markham

Ah, great it is to believe the dream as we stand in youth by the starry stream; but a greater thing is to fight life through and say at the end, the dream is true!
Edwin Markham

We have ground for believing that a noble form of socialism existed among the prehistoric and primitive people on this planet, the people that broke into restless groups after the ancient Deluge and went wandering over the globe. For we find a socialist tendency in all the barbaric tribes of earth.
Edwin Markham

The thing that is incredible is life itself. Why should we be here in this sun-illuminated universe? Why should there be green earth under our feet?
Edwin Markham

We have committed the Golden Rule to memory; let us now commit it to life.
Edwin Markham

For all your days be prepared, and meet them ever alike. When you are the anvil, bear - when you are the hammer, strike.
Edwin Markham

To throw oneself to the side of the oppressed is the only dignified thing to do in life.
Edwin Markham

Oft when the white, still dawn lifted the skies and pushed the hills apart, I have felt it like a glory in my heart.
Edwin Markham

Few cities have been more definitely impressed upon the imagination of the world than San Francisco, this gray-hilled city on the peninsula by the hospitable bay, where Saint Francis protects the ships as he protected the birds of Assisi.
Edwin Markham

'Custom is the great deadener.' There is no doubt that we of the white race are going on obliviously supporting customs that would seem abhorrent and incredible to a higher and more brotherly civilization.
Edwin Markham

Spain held the doctrine (and was right in holding it) that every human enterprise should stand on two pillars - the temporal and the spiritual. To depend upon one of these pillars alone is to call down final failure upon any undertaking.
Edwin Markham

Force cannot transmit a moral principle: moral ideas can be received only through the reason of the heart.
Edwin Markham

In my boyhood, cattle-raising ran almost neck and neck with grain-raising. In my secluded little valley in the Suisun Hills, the rodeo was the most exhilarating spectacle in the round year.
Edwin Markham

It is doubtless true that men are bad because they are unhappy. If anyone could give them real happiness, the happiness of brotherhood, they would all want to live the true and brotherly life.
Edwin Markham

Big money is not a good thing for a little soul: it will only ensnare his feet, and he will fall to his ruin. Wealth is safe only for those who have a wealth of wisdom.
Edwin Markham

Every man on the planet should do some physical work: he should help in the bread-labor of mankind. He should also do some of the intellectual work: he should help in the thought-labor of mankind. In a word, every thinker should work, and every worker should think.
Edwin Markham

Bierce radiates brilliancy, and perhaps no other man of letters ever had a more ready command of condensed expression. For him, each word has its unique place in the peerage of words, and he would not use a word out of place any sooner than he would thrust an ape into a captain's saddle.
Edwin Markham

Use and beauty - these should be the ends of all human effort. But the competitive struggle swings us away from this high ground and plunges us into a quagmire fight for cheap goods and cheap labor.
Edwin Markham

Greed and Gain, grim guardians of the great god Mammon, continually cry in the ears of the poor, 'Give us your little ones!' And forever do the poor push out their little ones at the imperious ukase, feeding the children to a blind Hunger that is never filled.
Edwin Markham

The open street, like the open sea, is an inviting thing to the mind of man. It is one of the few places where all may meet as equals under sun or rain; but only a John Bunyan could adequately portray the danger of the cities with their pitfalls for the young unguarded feet.
Edwin Markham

Is it not a grotesque civilization which sends missionaries across the sea to save the souls of the heathen, and yet permits conditions at home that debauch the children at our very doors?
Edwin Markham