Quote

A drop of water, if it could write out its own history, would explain the universe to us.

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
Universe
History
Write
Writing
Would
Drop
Explain
Water

More quotes by Lucy Larcom

Image
A friend is a beloved mystery dearest always because he is not ourself, and has something in him which it is impossible for us to fathom. If it were not so, friendship would lose its chief zest.
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
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
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
Tailor's work--the finishing of men's outside garments--was the trade learned most frequently by women in [the 1820s and 1830s],and one or more of my older sisters worked at it I think it must have been at home, for I somehow or somewhere got the idea, while I was a small child, that the chief end of woman was to make clothing for mankind.
Lucy Larcom
Image
If the world 's a vale of tears, Smile, till rainbows span it!
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
Labor, in itself, is neither elevating or otherwise. It is the laborer's privilege to ennoble his work by the aim with which he undertakes it, and by the enthusiasm and faithfulness he puts into it.
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 defied the machinery to make me its slave. Its incessant discords could not drown the music of my thoughts if I would let them fly high enough.
Lucy Larcom
Image
Everything in nature has its own intrinsic charm, as the work of its Creator's hand but the chief beauty of the whole lies in its suggested relations to humanity. Things announce and wait for persons. The house would not have been thus beautifully built and furnished, except for an expected tenant.
Lucy Larcom
Image
Some of us must wait for the best human gifts until we come to heavenly places. Our natural desire for musical utterance is perhaps a prophecy that in a perfect world we shall all know how to sing.
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
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 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
Thou hastenest down between the hills to meet me at the road, The secret scarcely lisping of thy beautiful abode Among the pines and mosses of yonder shadowy height, Where thou dost sparkle into song, and fill the woods with light.
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
Image
To her bier Comes the year Not with weeping and distress, as mortals do, But, to guide her way to it, All the trees have torches lit Blazing red the maples shine the woodlands through.
Lucy Larcom
Image
Every true friend is a glimpse of God.
Lucy Larcom
Image
That larger vision is certain to make clear the value in our own lives of service to others.
Lucy Larcom