Quote

If the world 's a vale of tears, Smile, till rainbows span it!

Lucy Larcom

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lucy Larcom
Age: 69 †
Born: 1824
Born: March 5
Died: 1893
Died: April 17
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Beverly
Massachusetts
Till
Smile
Tears
World
Vale
Rainbows
Span
Veils
Rainbow

More quotes by Lucy Larcom

Image
I don't own an inch of land, but all I see is mine.
Lucy Larcom
Image
What is the meaning of 'gossip?' Doesn't it originate with sympathy, an interest in one's neighbor, degenerating into idle curiosity and love of tattling? Which is worse, this habit, or keeping one's self so absorbed intellectually as to forget the sufferings and cares of others, to lose sympathy through having too much to think about?
Lucy Larcom
Image
If an apple blossom or a ripe apple could tell its own story, it would be, still more than its own, the story of the sunshine that smiled upon it, of the winds that whispered to it, of the birds that sang around it, of the storms that visited it, and of the motherly tree that held it and fed it until its petals were unfolded and its form developed.
Lucy Larcom
Image
The beauty of work depends upon the way we meet it — whether we arm ourselves each morning to attack it as an enemy that must be vanquished before night comes, or whether we open our eyes with the sunrise to welcome it as an approaching friend.
Lucy Larcom
Image
The soul, cramped among the petty vexations of Earth, needs to keep its windows constantly open to the invigorating air of large and free ideas: and what thought is so grand as that of an ever-present God, in whom all that is vital in humanity breathes and grows?
Lucy Larcom
Image
My 'must-have' was poetry. From the first, life meant that to me. And, fortunately, poetry is not purchasable material, but an atmosphere in which every life may expand. I found it everywhere about me.
Lucy Larcom
Image
I remember how beautiful the Merrimac looked to me in childhood, the first true river I ever knew it opened upon my sight and wound its way through my heart like a dream realized its harebells, its rocks, and its rapids, are far more fixed in my memory than anything about the sea.
Lucy Larcom
Image
Sometimes it seems to me that God 's way of dealing with me is not to let me see much of my friends, those who are most to me in the spiritual life, lest I should forget that the invisible bond is the only reality. That is the only way I can reconcile myself to the inevitable separations of life and death.
Lucy Larcom
Image
A drop of water, if it could write out its own history, would explain the universe to us.
Lucy Larcom
Image
A journal of the 'subjective' kind I have always thought foolish, as nurturing a morbid self -consciousness in the writer and yet, alone so much as I am, it is well to have some sort of a ventilator from the interior.
Lucy Larcom
Image
The first real unhappiness I remember to have felt was when some one told me, one day, that I did not love God. I insisted, almost tearfully, that I did but I was told that if I did truly love Him I should always be good. I knew I was not that, and the feeling of sudden orphanage came over me like a bewildering cloud.
Lucy Larcom
Image
A man may make a misanthrope of himself, but he is never one by nature.
Lucy Larcom
Image
It is the greatest of all mistakes to begin life with the expectation that it is going to be easy, or with the wish to have it so.
Lucy Larcom
Image
We might all place ourselves in one of two ranks the women who do something, and the women who do nothing the first being of course the only creditable place to occupy.
Lucy Larcom
Image
Like a plant that starts up in showers and sunshine and does not know which has best helped it to grow, it is difficult to say whether the hard things or the pleasant things did me the most good.
Lucy Larcom
Image
One mistake with beginners in writing is, that they think it important to spin out something long. It is a great deal better not to write more than a page or two, unless you have something to say, and can write it correctly.
Lucy Larcom
Image
If the world seems cold to you, kindle fires to warm it.
Lucy Larcom
Image
Every true friend is a glimpse of God.
Lucy Larcom
Image
Canst thou prophesy, thou little tree, What the glory of thy boughs shall be?
Lucy Larcom
Image
Whoever claims to understand another person completely, is either entirely ignorant of himself, or else has a nature so small that he can measure it easily, and supposes it to be the standard of every other nature.
Lucy Larcom