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Every human being has, like Socrates, an attendant spirit and wise are they who obey its signals. If it does not always tell us what to do, it always cautions us what not to do.

Lydia M. Child

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Lydia M. Child
Age: 78 †
Born: 1802
Born: January 1
Died: 1880
Died: January 1
Activist
Geologist
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Medford
Massachusetts
Lydia Maria Francis Child
Every
Obey
Always
Spirituality
Like
Wise
Cautions
Tell
Carefulness
Spirit
Attendant
Doe
Socrates
Human
Caution
Humans
Signals

More quotes by Lydia M. Child

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The laws of our being are such that we must perform some degree of use in the world, whether we intend it, or not but we can deprive ourselves of its indwelling joy, by acting entirely from the love of self.
Lydia M. Child
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A reformer is one who sets forth cheerfully toward sure defeat.
Lydia M. Child
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Yours for the unshackled exercise of every faculty by every human being.
Lydia M. Child
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Not in vain is Ireland pouring itself all over the earth. The Irish, with their glowing hearts and reverent credulity, are needed in this cold age of intellect and skepticism.
Lydia M. Child
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Even if nothing worse than wasted mental effort could be laid to the charge of theology, that alone ought to be sufficient to banish it from the earth, as one of the worst enemies of mankind.
Lydia M. Child
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The rarest attainment is to grow old happily and gracefully.
Lydia M. Child
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Nature made us individuals, as she did the flowers and the pebbles but we are afraid to be peculiar, and so our society resembles a bag of marbles, or a string of mold candles. Why should we all dress after the same fashion? The frost never paints my windows twice alike.
Lydia M. Child
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I think we have reason to thank God for Abraham Lincoln. With all his deficiencies, it must be admitted that he has grown continually.
Lydia M. Child
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Happiness consists not in having much, but in wanting no more than you have.
Lydia M. Child
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All who strive to live for something beyond mere selfish aims find their capacities for doing good very inadequate to their aspirations. They do so much less than they want to do, and so much less than they, at the outset, expected to do, that their lives, viewed retrospectively, inevitably look like failure.
Lydia M. Child
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The boughs of no two trees ever have the same arrangement. Nature always produces individuals She never produces classes.
Lydia M. Child
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A human heart can never grow old if it takes a lively interest in the pairing of birds, the reproduction of flowers, and the changing tints of autumn leaves.
Lydia M. Child
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But men never violate the laws of God without suffering the consequences, sooner or later.
Lydia M. Child
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An effort made for the happiness of others lifts above ourselves.
Lydia M. Child
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Misfortune is never mournful to the soul that accepts it for such do always see that every cloud is an angel's face.
Lydia M. Child
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To everything there is a bright side and a dark side and I hold it to be unwise, unphilosophic, unkind to others, and unhealthy for one's own soul, to form the habit of looking on the dark side. Cheerfulness is to the spiritual atmosphere what sunshine is to the earthly landscape. I am resolved to cherish cheerfulness with might and main.
Lydia M. Child
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Neither lemonade nor anything else can prevent the inroads of old age. At present, I am stoical under its advances, and hope I shall remain so. I have but one prayer at heart and that is, to have my faculties so far preserved that I can be useful, in some way or other, to the last.
Lydia M. Child
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I will work in my own way, according to the light that is in me.
Lydia M. Child
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Reverence is the highest quality of man's nature and that individual, or nation, which has it slightly developed, is so far unfortunate. It is a strong spiritual instinct, and seeks to form channels for itself where none exists thus Americans, in the dearth of other objects to worship, fall to worshiping themselves.
Lydia M. Child
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The eye of genius has always a plaintive expression, and its natural language is pathos.
Lydia M. Child