Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Make people happy and there will not be half the quarreling, or a tenth part of the wickedness there now is.
Lydia M. Child
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Part
Make
People
Quarreling
Tenth
Wickedness
Half
Happy
More quotes by Lydia M. Child
Birds and beasts have in fact our own nature, flattened a semi-tone.
Lydia M. Child
The eye of genius has always a plaintive expression, and its natural language is pathos.
Lydia M. Child
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
There was a time when all these things would have passed me by, like the flitting figures of a theatre, sufficient for the amusement of an hour. But now, I have lost the power of looking merely on the surface.
Lydia M. Child
The boughs of no two trees ever have the same arrangement. Nature always produces individuals She never produces classes.
Lydia M. Child
An effort made for the happiness of others lifts above ourselves.
Lydia M. Child
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
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
I will work in my own way, according to the light that is in me.
Lydia M. Child
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
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
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
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
Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him father.
Lydia M. Child
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
Happiness consists not in having much, but in wanting no more than you have.
Lydia M. Child
[U]sefulness is happiness, and... all other things are but incidental.
Lydia M. Child
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
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
So easy it is to see the errors of past ages, so difficult to acknowledge our own!
Lydia M. Child