Quote

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

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
Good
Came
Cloud
Always
Feeling
Unhappiness
Love
Felt
Sudden
Like
Feelings
Clouds
Remember
Truly
Firsts
Told
Bewildering
First
Knew
Orphanage
Real
Almost
Insisted

More quotes by 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
A drop of water, if it could write out its own history, would explain the universe to us.
Lucy Larcom
Image
If the world 's a vale of tears, Smile, till rainbows span it!
Lucy Larcom
Image
If the world seems cold to you, kindle fires to warm it.
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
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
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
I am willing to make any part of my life public, if it will help others.
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
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
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
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
The whole world of thought lay unexplored before me, - a world of which I had already caught large and tempting glimpses.
Lucy Larcom
Image
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
Image
Canst thou prophesy, thou little tree, What the glory of thy boughs shall be?
Lucy Larcom
Image
Every true friend is a glimpse of God.
Lucy Larcom
Image
Many kinds of fruit grow upon the tree of life, but none so sweet as friendship as with the orange tree its blossoms and fruit appear at the same time, full of refreshment for sense and for soul.
Lucy Larcom
Image
I don't own an inch of land, but all I see is mine.
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
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