Quote

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

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
Every
Meant
Life
Materials
Poetry
Found
Fortunately
May
Expand
Firsts
Atmosphere
First
Everywhere
Must
Material

More quotes by 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
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
If the world 's a vale of tears, Smile, till rainbows span it!
Lucy Larcom
Image
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
Image
The land is dearer for the sea, The ocean for the shore.
Lucy Larcom
Image
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
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
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
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 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
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
Image
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
Image
I don't own an inch of land, but all I see is mine.
Lucy Larcom
Image
Whatever science and philosophy may do for mankind, the world can never outgrow its need of the simplicity that is in Christ.
Lucy Larcom
Image
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
Image
The curse of covetousness is that it destroys manhood by substituting money for character.
Lucy Larcom
Image
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
Image
Canst thou prophesy, thou little tree, What the glory of thy boughs shall be?
Lucy Larcom
Image
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