Quote

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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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
Worship
Slightly
Individual
Americans
Unfortunate
Fall
Objects
Reverence
Strong
Highest
Developed
Nature
Nation
Exists
Form
Quality
Instinct
Dearth
Men
Nations
Thus
Channels
None
Seeks
Spiritual

More quotes by Lydia M. Child

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Woman stock is rising in the market. I shall not live to see women vote, but I'll come and rap on the ballot box.
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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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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Make people happy and there will not be half the quarreling, or a tenth part of the wickedness there now is.
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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Yours for the unshackled exercise of every faculty by every human being.
Lydia M. Child
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So easy it is to see the errors of past ages, so difficult to acknowledge our own!
Lydia M. Child
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Birds and beasts have in fact our own nature, flattened a semi-tone.
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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a great mind can attend to little things, but a little mind cannot attend to great things.
Lydia M. Child
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It is impossible to exaggerate the evil work theology has done in the world.
Lydia M. Child
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Home - that blessed word, which opens to the human heart the most perfect glimpse of Heaven, and helps to carry it thither, as on an angel's wings.
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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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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The civilization of any country may always be measured by the degree of equality between men and women and society will never come truly into order until there is perfect equality and copartnership between them in every department of human life.
Lydia M. Child
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[U]sefulness is happiness, and... all other things are but incidental.
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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It is my mission to help in the breaking down of classes, and to make all men feel as if they were brethren of the same family, sharing the same rights, the same capabilities, and the same responsibilities. While my hand can hold a pen, I will use it to this end and while my brain can earn a dollar, I will devote it to this end.
Lydia M. Child
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We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.
Lydia M. Child
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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