Easter

The resurrection gives my life meaning and direction and the opportunity to start over no matter what my circumstances. -Robert Flatt


Easter says you can put truth in a grave, but it won't stay there. -Clarence W. Hall



It is the hour to rend thy chains,
The blossom time of souls. -Katherine Lee Bates


The joyful news that He is risen does not change the contemporary world. Still before us lie work, discipline, sacrifice. But the fact of Easter gives us the spiritual power to do the work, accept the discipline, and make the sacrifice. -Henry Knox Sherrill


Could life so end, half told; its school so fail?
Soul, soul, there is a sequel to thy tale! -Robert Mowry Bell


Easter is the demonstration of God that life is essentially spiritual and timeless. -Charles M. Crowe


Tomb, thou shalt not hold Him longer;
Death is strong, but Life is stronger;
Stronger than the dark, the light;
Stronger than the wrong, the right... -Phillips Brooks, "An Easter Carol"


Let every man and woman count himself immortal. Let him catch the revelation of Jesus in his resurrection. Let him say not merely, "Christ is risen," but "I shall rise." -Phillips Brooks


On Easter Day the veil between time and eternity thins to gossamer. -Douglas Horton


Easter spells out beauty, the rare beauty of new life. -S.D. Gordon


Celestial spirit that doth roll
The heart's sepulchral stone away,
Be this our resurrection day,
The singing Easter of the soul -
O gentle Master of the Wise,
Teach us to say: "I will arise." -Richard Le Gallienne


Easter is not a time for groping through dusty, musty tomes or tombs to disprove spontaneous generation or even to prove life eternal. It is a day to fan the ashes of dead hope, a day to banish doubts and seek the slopes where the sun is rising, to revel in the faith which transports us out of ourselves and the dead past into the vast and inviting unknown. -Author unknown, as quoted in the Lewiston Tribune


The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amid the war of elements,
The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds. -Joseph Addison


Where man sees but withered leaves, God sees sweet flowers growing. -Albert Laighton


The fasts are done; the Aves said;
The moon has filled her horn
And in the solemn night I watch
Before the Easter morn.
So pure, so still the starry heaven,
So hushed the brooding air,
I could hear the sweep of an angel's wings
If one should earthward fare. -Edna Dean Proctor, "Easter Morning"


But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust. -Walter Raleigh


He takes men out of time and makes them feel eternity. -Ralph Waldo Emerson


For I remember it is Easter morn,
And life and love and peace are all new born. -Alice Freeman Palmer


Thou art the Sun of other days.
They shine by giving back the rays. -John Keble, The Christian Year: Easter Days


We live and die; Christ died and lived! -John Stott


Awake, thou wintry earth -
Fling off thy sadness!
Fair vernal flowers, laugh forth
Your ancient gladness! -Thomas Blackburn, "An Easter Hymn"


Those have a short Lent, who owe money to be paid at Easter. -Benjamin Franklin


See the land, her Easter keeping,
Rises as her Maker rose.
Seeds, so long in darkness sleeping,
Burst at last from winter snows.
Earth with heaven above rejoices... -Charles Kingsley


'Twas Easter-Sunday. The full-blossomed trees
Filled all the air with fragrance and with joy. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Spanish Student


Once more to new creation Awake,
and death gainsay,
For death is swallowed up of life,
And Christ is risen today! -George Newell Lovejoy


Let the resurrection joy lift us from loneliness and weakness and despair to strength and beauty and happiness. -Floyd W. Tomkins


There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou - Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed. -Emily Bronte


And he departed from our sight that we might return to our heart, and there find Him. For He departed, and behold, He is here. -St Augustine


Ye sleeping buds, break
Open your green cerements, and wake
To fragrant blossoming for His sweet sake. -Margaret French Patton


The story of Easter is the story of God's wonderful window of divine surprise. -Carl Knudsen


Angels, roll the rock away;
Death, yield up thy mighty prey:
See, He rises from the tomb,
Glowing with immortal bloom. -Thomas Scott, "Easter Angels"


Unfortunately there is nothing more inane than an Easter carol. It is a religious perversion of the activity of Spring in our blood. -Wallace Stevens, 1916


Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in spring-time. -Martin Luther


I think of the garden after the rain;
And hope to my heart comes singing,
At morn the cherry-blooms will be white,
And the Easter bells be ringing! -Edna Dean Proctor, "Easter Bells"


Well pleaseth me the sweet time of Easter
That maketh the leaf and the flower come out. -Bertran de Born


Easter tells us that life is to be interpreted not simply in terms of things but in terms of ideals. -Charles M. Crowe


God expects from men something more than at such times, and that it were much to be wished for the credit of their religion as well as the satisfaction of their conscience that their Easter devotions would in some measure come up to their Easter dress. -Robert South, Sermons