Quote

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

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Lucy Larcom
Age: 69 †
Born: 1824
Born: March 5
Died: 1893
Died: April 17
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Beverly
Massachusetts
Way
Upon
Friend
Sunrise
Eye
Enemy
Delightful
Comes
Open
Attack
Night
Company
Evening
Wells
Beauty
Welcome
Must
Eyes
Meet
Vanquished
Feels
Morning
Depends
Approaching
Work
Whether
Arms
Fatigue

More quotes by 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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A drop of water, if it could write out its own history, would explain the universe to us.
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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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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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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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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That larger vision is certain to make clear the value in our own lives of service to others.
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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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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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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A man may make a misanthrope of himself, but he is never one by nature.
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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No one can feel more gratefully the charm of noble scenery, or the refreshment of escape into the unspoiled solitudes of nature, than the laborer at some close in-door employment.
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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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
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Canst thou prophesy, thou little tree, What the glory of thy boughs shall be?
Lucy Larcom
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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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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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Sometimes it seems to me that God 's way of dealing with me is not to let me see much of my friends, those who are most to me in the spiritual life, lest I should forget that the invisible bond is the only reality. That is the only way I can reconcile myself to the inevitable separations of life and death.
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