Quotes from Lydia Maria Child

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

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

No music is so pleasant to my ears as that word—father.

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

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.

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

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

They [the 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!

Woman stock is rising in the market. I shall not live to see women vote, but I'll come and rap at the ballot box.

Every human being has... an attendant spirit.... If it does not always tell us what to do, it always cautions us what not to do. — Lydia Maria Child

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.

The cure for all 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.