Quote

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

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Lucy Larcom
Age: 69 †
Born: 1824
Born: March 5
Died: 1893
Died: April 17
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Beverly
Massachusetts
Pages
Important
Unless
Great
Writing
Deal
Long
Deals
Beginners
Something
Mistake
Spin
Think
Write
Correctly
Thinking
Two
Page
Better

More quotes by Lucy Larcom

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To different minds, poetry may present different phases. To me, the reverent faith of the people I lived among, and their faithful everyday living, was poetry blossoms and trees and blue shies were poetry. God himself was poetry.
Lucy Larcom
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The peach-bud glows, the wild bee hums, and wind-flowers wave in graceful gladness.
Lucy Larcom
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I don't own an inch of land, but all I see is mine.
Lucy Larcom
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God be thanked for the thinkers of good and noble thoughts! It wakes up all the best in ourselves, to come into close contact with others greater and better in every way than we are.
Lucy Larcom
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If the world 's a vale of tears, Smile, till rainbows span it!
Lucy Larcom
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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
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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
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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
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These blossoms, gathered in familiar paths, With dear companions now passed out of sight, Shall not be laid upon their graves. They live, Since love is deathless. Pleasure now nor pride Is theirs in mortal wise, but hallowing thoughts Will meet the offering, of so little worth, Wanting the benison death has made divine.
Lucy Larcom
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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
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Canst thou prophesy, thou little tree, What the glory of thy boughs shall be?
Lucy Larcom
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The land is dearer for the sea, The ocean for the shore.
Lucy Larcom
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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
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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
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That larger vision is certain to make clear the value in our own lives of service to others.
Lucy Larcom
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A drop of water, if it could write out its own history, would explain the universe to us.
Lucy Larcom
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Let us not depreciate Earth. There is no atom in it but is alive and astir in the all-penetrating splendor of God. From the infinitesimal to the infinite, everything is striving to express the thought of His Presence with which it overflows.
Lucy Larcom
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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
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The true idea of a church has not yet been shown the world, a visible Church, I mean, unless it was in the very earliest times yes, the twelve disciples bound to their Lord in love, to do his work forever, that was a church, a Christian family.
Lucy Larcom
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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