Lydia Sigourney Quotes

Mothers, whatever you wish your children to become, strive to exhibit in your own lives and conversation.

In early childhood you may lay the foundation of poverty or riches, industry or idleness, good or evil, by the habits to which you train your children. Teach them right habits then, and their future life is safe.

We speak of educating our children. Do we know that our children also educate us?

The strength of a nation, especially of a republican nation, is in the intelligent and well ordered homes of the people.

Teachers should be held in the highest honor. They are the allies of legislators; they have agency in the prevention of crime; they aid in regulating the atmosphere, whose incessant action and pressure cause the life-blood to circulate, and to return pure and healthful to the heart of the nation.

Pride is a fruitful source of uneasiness. It keeps the mind in disquiet. Humility is the antidote to this evil.

A disposition to dwell on the bright side...is like gold to its possessor.

Life has, indeed, many ills, but the mind that views every object in its most cheering aspect, and every doubtful dispensation as replete with latent good, bears within itself a powerful and perpetual antidote. The gloomy soul aggravates misfortune, while a cheerful smile often dispels those mists that portend a storm.

The true order of learning should be first, what is necessary; second, what is useful, and third, what is ornamental. To reverse this arrangement is like beginning to build at the top of the edifice.

The soul of woman lives in love.

Not on the outer world For inward joy depend; Enjoy the luxury of thought, Make thine own self friend; Not with the restless throng, In search of solace roam But with an independent zeal Be intimate at home.

There must be some mixture of happiness in everything but sin.

Habits, though in their commencement like the filmy line of the spider, trembling at every breeze, may in the end prove as links of tempered steel, binding a deathless being to eternal felicity or woe.

Prosperity, alas! is often but another name for pride.

As nothing truly valuable can be attained without industry, so there can be no persevering industry without a deep sense of the value of time.

Admitting that it is the profession of our sex to teach, we perceive the mother to be first in point of precedence, in degree of power, in the faculty of teaching, and in the department allotted. For in point of precedence she is next to the Creator, in power over her pupil, limitless and without competitor.

Ye say they all have passed away, That noble race and brave; That their light canoes have vanished From off the crested wave; That mid the forests where they roamed There rings no hunter's shout; But their name is on your waters; Ye may not wash it out.