Lydia Maria Child

I keep working because I am quite sure that no particle of goodness or truth is ever really lost, however appearances may be to the contrary.

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 …

Yours for the unshackled exercise of every faculty by every human being.

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 …

That a majority of women do not wish for any important change in their social and civil condition, merely proves that they are the unreflecting slaves of custom.

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 …

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, …

I think we have reason to thank God for Abraham Lincoln. With all his deficiencies, it must be admitted that he has grown continually.

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

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.

It is impossible to exaggerate the evil work theology has done in the world.

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 …

The cure for all the ills and wrongs, the cares, the sorrows, and crimes of humanity, all lie in that one word LOVE. It is the divine vitality that produces and restores life. To each and every one of us it gives the power of working …

That man’s best works should be such bungling imitations of Nature’s infinite perfection, matters not much; but that he should make himself an imitation, this is the fact which Nature moans over, and deprecates beseechingly. Be …

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. letters from ny wqadd

Childhood itself is scarcely more lovely than a cheerful, kind, sunshiny old age.

Misfortune is never mournful to the soul that accepts it; for such do always see that every cloud is an angel’s face. Every man deems that he has precisely the trials and temptations which are the hardest of all others for him to bear; but …

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 …

The eye of genius has always a plaintive expression, and its natural language is pathos.

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.

None speak of the bravery, the might, or the intellect of Jesus; but the devil is always imagined as a being of acute intellect, political cunning, and the fiercest courage. These universal and instinctive tendencies of the human mind …

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 the character, though few can decypher even fragments of their meaning.

Not in vain is Ireland pouring itself all over the earth. Divine Providence has a mission for her children to fulfill; though a mission unrecognized by political economists. There is ever a moral balance preserved in the universe, like the …

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.