Lydia M. Child Quotes

Belief in oneself is one of the most important bricks in building any successful venture.

An effort made for the happiness of others lifts above ourselves.

You find yourself refreshed in the presence of cheerful people. Why not make an honest effort to confer that pleasure on others? Half the battle is gained if you never allow yourself to say anything gloomy.

Prejudices of all kinds have their strongest holds in the minds of the vulgar and the ignorant.

So easy it is to see the errors of past ages, so difficult to acknowledge our own!

The boughs of no two trees ever have the same arrangement. Nature always produces individuals; She never produces classes.

Happiness consists not in having much, but in wanting no more than you have.

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.

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.

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.

Make people happy and there will not be half the quarreling, or a tenth part of the wickedness there now is.

I will work in my own way, according to the light that is in me.

Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him father.

The United States is a warning rather than an example to the world.

The cure for all the ills and wrongs, the cares, the sorrows, and the crimes of humanity, all lie in the one word ‘love’. It is the divine vitality that everywhere produces and restores life.

Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of their character, though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning.

The rarest attainment is to grow old happily and gracefully.

I was gravely warned by some of my female acquaintances that no woman could expect to be regarded as a lady after she had written a book.

They [slaves] have stabbed themselves for freedom-jumped into the waves for freedom-starved for freedom-fought like very tigers for freedom! But they have been hung, and burned, and shot-and their tyrants have been their historians!

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.

We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.

our republican ideas cannot be consistently carried out while women are excluded from any share in the government. … Any class of human beings to whom a position of perpetual subordination is assigned, however much they may be petted and flattered, must inevitably be dwarfed, morally and intellectually.

Over the river and through the wood,
To grandfather’s house we go;
The horse knows the way
To carry the sleigh,
Through the white and drifted snow.

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.

Misfortune is never mournful to the soul that accepts it; for such do always see that every cloud is an angel’s face.