Lucy Larcom quotes

Lucy Larcom was an American poet and author who gained recognition for her writings about mill workers and women's lives. Her works often reflected her own experiences working in textile mills and her advocacy for women's education. She contributed significantly to 19th-century American literature and inspired future generations of women writers. Here are 50 of her quotes:

If the world 's a vale of tears, Smile, till rainbows span it!

Lucy Larcom

The curse of covetousness is that it destroys manhood by substituting money for character.

Lucy Larcom

From the first opening of our eyes, it is the light that attracts us. We clutch aimlessly with our baby fingers at the gossamer-motes in the sunbeam, and we die reaching out after an ineffable blending of earthly and heavenly beauty which we shall never fully comprehend.

Lucy Larcom

What is the meaning of 'gossip?' Doesn't it originate with sympathy, an interest in one's neighbor, degenerating into idle curiosity and love of tattling? Which is worse, this habit, or keeping one's self so absorbed intellectually as to forget the sufferings and cares of others, to lose sympathy through having too much to think about?

Lucy Larcom

Sometimes it seems to me that God's way of dealing with me is not to let me see much of my friends, those who are most to me in the spiritual life, lest I should forget that the invisible bond is the only reality. That is the only way I can reconcile myself to the inevitable separations of life and death.

Lucy Larcom

O Mariner-soul, Thy quest is but begun, There are new worlds Forever to be won.

Lucy Larcom

Like a plant that starts up in showers and sunshine and does not know which has best helped it to grow, it is difficult to say whether the hard things or the pleasant things did me the most good.

Lucy Larcom

Whatever science and philosophy may do for mankind, the world can never outgrow its need of the simplicity that is in Christ.

Lucy Larcom

There is something in the place where we were born that holds us always by the heart-strings.

Lucy Larcom

We might all place ourselves in one of two ranks the women who do something, and the women who do nothing; the first being of course the only creditable place to occupy.

Lucy Larcom

One mistake with beginners in writing is, that they think it important to spin out something long. It is a great deal better not to write more than a page or two, unless you have something to say, and can write it correctly.

Lucy Larcom

We were not meant to mask ourselves before our fellow-beings, but to be, through our human forms, true and clear utterances of the spirit within. Since God gave us these bodies, they must have been given us as guides to Him and revealers of Him.

Lucy Larcom

Let us not depreciate Earth. There is no atom in it but is alive and astir in the all-penetrating splendor of God. From the infinitesimal to the infinite, everything is striving to express the thought of His Presence with which it overflows.

Lucy Larcom

Whoever claims to understand another person completely, is either entirely ignorant of himself, or else has a nature so small that he can measure it easily, and supposes it to be the standard of every other nature.

Lucy Larcom

By suns unsettling kist. Out through the utmost gates of space, Past where the gray stars drift, To the widening Infinite, my soul Glides on, a vessel swift, Yet loses not her anchorage In yonder azure rift.

Lucy Larcom

Oh, her heart's adrift with one On an endless voyage gone! Night and morning Hannah's at the window binding shoes.

Lucy Larcom

I do not own an inch of land, But all I see is mine.

Lucy Larcom

No one can feel more gratefully the charm of noble scenery, or the refreshment of escape into the unspoiled solitudes of nature, than the laborer at some close in-door employment.

Lucy Larcom

It is one of the most beautiful facts in this human existence of ours, that we remember the earliest and freshest part of it most vividly. Doubtless it was meant that our childhood should live on in us forever.

Lucy Larcom

A friend is a beloved mystery; dearest always because he is not ourself, and has something in him which it is impossible for us to fathom. If it were not so, friendship would lose its chief zest.

Lucy Larcom

Rich or poor, every child comes into the world with some imperative need of its own, which shapes its individuality.

Lucy Larcom

The true idea of a church has not yet been shown the world, a visible Church, I mean, unless it was in the very earliest times; yes, the twelve disciples bound to their Lord in love, to do his work forever, that was a church, a Christian family.

Lucy Larcom