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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

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Lucy Larcom
Age: 69 †
Born: 1824
Born: March 5
Died: 1893
Died: April 17
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Beverly
Massachusetts
Understand
Ignorant
Else
Measure
Another
Claims
Nature
Easily
Persons
Standards
Supposes
Person
Completely
Standard
Every
Either
Whoever
Small
Entirely

More quotes by 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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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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A drop of water, if it could write out its own history, would explain the universe to us.
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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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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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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Canst thou prophesy, thou little tree, What the glory of thy boughs shall be?
Lucy Larcom
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Few parents are aware of the difficulties that beset the minds of the little philosophers and theologians who sit upon their knees or play at their feet and many a parent could not comprehend the disturbance, if he were aware of it.
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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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
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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
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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
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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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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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I don't own an inch of land, but all I see is mine.
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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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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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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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