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[U]sefulness is happiness, and... all other things are but incidental.

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
Incidental
Happiness
Helping
Things

More quotes by 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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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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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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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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Love is the divine quality that everywhere produces and restores life. To each and every one of us, it gives the power of working miracles if we will.
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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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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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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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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a great mind can attend to little things, but a little mind cannot attend to great things.
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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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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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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It is right noble to fight with wickedness and wrong the mistake is in supposing that spiritual evil can be overcome by physical means.
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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An effort made for the happiness of others lifts above ourselves.
Lydia M. Child
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Thy treasures of gold Are dim with the blood of the hearts thou hast sold Thy home may be lovely, but round it I hear The crack of the whip, and the footsteps of fear.
Lydia M. Child
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Law is not law, if it violates the principles of eternal justice.
Lydia M. Child
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A reformer is one who sets forth cheerfully toward sure defeat.
Lydia M. Child