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

More quotes by Lucy Larcom

Image
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
Image
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
Image
If an apple blossom or a ripe apple could tell its own story, it would be, still more than its own, the story of the sunshine that smiled upon it, of the winds that whispered to it, of the birds that sang around it, of the storms that visited it, and of the motherly tree that held it and fed it until its petals were unfolded and its form developed.
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
If the world seems cold to you, kindle fires to warm it.
Lucy Larcom
Image
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
Image
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
Image
A man may make a misanthrope of himself, but he is never one by nature.
Lucy Larcom
Image
The peach-bud glows, the wild bee hums, and wind-flowers wave in graceful gladness.
Lucy Larcom
Image
The curse of covetousness is that it destroys manhood by substituting money for character.
Lucy Larcom