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
Something
Mistake
Beginners
Think
Write
Spin
Thinking
Two
Correctly
Better
Page
Important
Pages
Great
Unless
Writing
Deal
Long
Deals

More quotes by Lucy Larcom

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I am willing to make any part of my life public, if it will help others.
Lucy Larcom
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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
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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
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Our relatives form the natural setting of our childhood. We understand ourselves best and are best understood by others through the persons who came nearest to us in our earliest years.
Lucy Larcom
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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
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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
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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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Whatever science and philosophy may do for mankind, the world can never outgrow its need of the simplicity that is in Christ.
Lucy Larcom
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Every true friend is a glimpse of God.
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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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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Canst thou prophesy, thou little tree, What the glory of thy boughs shall be?
Lucy Larcom
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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
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The whole world of thought lay unexplored before me, - a world of which I had already caught large and tempting glimpses.
Lucy Larcom
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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
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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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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
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A man may make a misanthrope of himself, but he is never one by nature.
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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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