Lydia Maria Child Quotes

77 Sourced Quotes

The old men gazed on them in their loveliness, and turned away with that deep and painful sigh, which the gladness of childhood, and thetransient beauty of youth, are so apt to awaken in the bosom of the aged.

Lydia Maria Child
There have always been a large class of thinkers who deny that the world makes any progress. They say we move in a circle; that evils are never conquered, but only change their forms.

Lydia Maria 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 Maria Child
Neither the planters nor the Colonization Society, seem to ask what right we have to remove people from the places where they have been born and brought up, —where they have a home, which, however miserable, is still their home, —and where their relatives and acquaintances all reside. Africa is no more their native country than England is ours, —nay, it is less so, because there is no community of language or habits; —besides, we cannot say to them, as Gilpin said to his horse, "'Twas for your pleasure you came here, you shall go back for mine."

Lydia Maria Child
England may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland, or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland.

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

Lydia Maria Child
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.

Lydia Maria Child
We must not forget that all great revolutions and reformations would look mean and meagre if examined in detail as they occurred at the time.

Lydia Maria Child
In the first place, an unjust law exists in this Commonwealth, by which marriages between persons of different color is pronounced illegal. I am perfectly aware of the gross ridicule to which I may subject myself by alluding to this particular; but I have lived too long, and observed too much, to be disturbed by the world's mockery.

Lydia Maria Child
Oh, these damp, sultry days of August! how oppressive they are to mind and body!

Lydia Maria Child
Philosophy and the arts are but a manifestation of the intelligible ideas that move the public mind; and thus they become visible images of the nations whence they emanate.

Lydia Maria 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 Maria Child
To American mothers, on whose intelligence and discretion the safety and prosperity of our Republic so much depend, this volume is respectfully inscribed.

Lydia Maria Child
Ah, my friend, that is the only true church organization, when heads and hearts unite in working for the welfare of the human race!

Lydia Maria Child
Avoid the necessity of a physician, if you can, by careful attention to your diet. Eat what best agrees with your system, and resolutely abstain from what hurts you, however well you may like it. A few days' abstinence, and cold water for a beverage, has driven off many an approaching disease.

Lydia Maria Child
In the first place, the government ought not to be invested with power to control the affections, any more than the consciences of citizens. A man has at least as good a right to choose his wife, as he has to choose his religion. His taste may not suit his neighbors; but so long as his deportment is correct, they have no right to interfere with his concerns.

Lydia Maria Child
The great difficulty in education is that we give rules instead of inspiring sentiments.... it is not possible to make rules enough to apply to all manner of cases; and if it were possible, a child would soon forget them. But if you inspire him with right feelings, they will govern his actions.

Lydia Maria Child
Genius hath electric power
Which earth can never tame,
Bright suns may scorch and dark clouds lower,
Its flash is still the same.

Lydia Maria Child
Whoso does not see that genuine life is a battle and a march, has poorly read his origin and his destiny.

Lydia Maria Child
While I listened, music was to my soul what the atmosphere is to my body; it was the breath of my inward life. I felt, more deeply than ever, that music is the highest symbol of the infinite and holy.... With renewed force I felt what I have often said, that the secret of creation lay in music. "A voice to light gave being." Sound led the stars into their places.

Lydia Maria Child
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 reveal much.

Lydia Maria Child
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.

Lydia Maria Child
A great mind can attend to little things, but a little mind cannot attend to great things.

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

Lydia Maria Child
I have never been so discouraged about abolition as since we came into this iron-bound Valley of the Connecticut. I have ceased to believe that public opinion will ever be sincerely reformed on the question till long after emancipation has taken place. I mean that for generations to come there will be a very large minority hostile to the claims of colored people.

Lydia Maria Child
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.

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.

Lydia Maria Child
My heart has written you several epistles in reply, but the hand could not be spared. Oh for some spiritual daguerreotype, by which thoughts might spontaneously write themselves!

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

Lydia Maria Child
Now twilight lets her curtain down
And pins it with a star.

Lydia Maria Child