Lydia M. Child
Lydia M. Child
Lydia Maria Francis Child, was an American abolitionist, women's rights activist, Native American rights activist, novelist, journalist, and opponent of American expansionism...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActivist
CountryUnited States of America
beautiful selfish distance
The existence of very pious feelings, in conjunction with intolerance, cruelty, and selfish policy, has never ceased to surprise and perplex those who have viewed it calmly from a distance. ... It is impossible to exaggerate the evil work theology has done in the world. What destruction of the beautiful monuments of past ages, what waste of life, what disturbance of domestic and social happiness, what perverted feelings, what blighted hearts, have always marked its baneful progress!
selfish failure people
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.
christian selfish government
It is wonderful how shy even liberal ministers generally are about trusting people with the plain truth concerning their religion. They want to veil it in a supernatural haze. They are very reluctant to part with the old idea that God has given to Jews and Christians a peculiar monopoly of truth. It is a selfish view of God's government of the world, and it is time that we knew enough to outgrow it.
hardest man precisely simply
Every man deems that he has precisely the trials and temptations which are the hardest of all others for him to bear; but they are so, simply because they are the very ones he most needs.
happiness being-content
Happiness consists not in having much, but in wanting no more than you have.
reform defeat reformers
A reformer is one who sets forth cheerfully toward sure defeat.
mind littles little-things
a great mind can attend to little things, but a little mind cannot attend to great things.
heart glowing age
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.
excess good-things mischievous
the excess of all good things is mischievous.
education children giving
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.
class ideas government
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.
spiritual dark sunshine
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.
change mean looks
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.
song nature men
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 spontaneous, be truthful, be free, and thus be individuals! is the song she sings through warbling birds, and whispering pines, and roaring waves, and screeching winds.