Thomas Wentworth Higginson Quotes

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• The first wild-flower of the year is like land after sea.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Flower, Years, Sea

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson (2007). “Outdoor Studies, Poems”, p.59, Reprint Services Corporation

  47 Copy quote

• To be really cosmopolitan a man must be at home even in his own country.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Country, Home, Country Love

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1880). “Short Studies of American Authors”

  24 Copy quote

• How many lessons of faith and beauty we should lose, if there were no winter in our year!

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Winter, Years, Lessons

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1863). “Out-door Papers”, p.239

  11 Copy quote

• The most fertile soil does not necessarily produce the most abundant harvest. It is the use we make of our faculties which renders them valuable.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Intelligence, Doe, Use

  7 Copy quote

• It is no discredit to Walt Whitman that he wrote Leaves of Grass, only that he did not burn it afterwards.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Leaves Of Grass, Grass, Walt

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1871). “Atlantic Essays”, p.44

  14 Copy quote

• Noble discontent is the path to heaven.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Inspirational, Heaven, Noble

  10 Copy quote

• Great men are rarely isolated mountain-peaks; they are the summits of ranges.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Humor, Men, Hiking

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1871). “Atlantic Essays”, p.18

  9 Copy quote

• Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Eye, Creating, Pairs

  8 Copy quote

• Do not waste a minute - not a second - in trying to demonstrate to others the merits of your performance. If your work does not vindicate itself, you cannot vindicate it.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Work, Trying, Waste

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1871). “Atlantic Essays”, p.84

  9 Copy quote

• All... religions show the same disparity between belief and practice, and each is safe till it tries to exclude the rest. Test each sect by its best or its worst as you will, by its high-water mark of virtue or its low-water mark of vice. But falsehood begins when you measure the ebb of any other religion against the flood-tide of your own. There is a noble and a base side to every history.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Religious, Practice, Water

  Thomas Wentworth HIGGINSON (1872). “The Sympathy of Religions; an Address Delivered ... February 6, 1870”, p.18

  6 Copy quote

• Fields are won by those who believe in the winning.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Believe, Winning, Fields

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1871). “Atlantic Essays”, p.68

  8 Copy quote

• But days even earlier than these, in April, have a charm, — even days that seem raw and rainy, when the sky is dull and a bequest of March - wind lingers, chasing the squirrel from the tree and the children from the meadows. There is a fascination in walking through these bare early woods, – there is such a pause of preparation, winter's work is so cleanly and thoroughly done. Everything is taken down and put away.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Summer, Spring, Taken

  "The Procession of the Flowers: And Kindred Papers".

  9 Copy quote

• Nothing can hide from me the conviction that an immortal soul needs for its sustenance something more than visiting, and gardening, and novel-reading, and crochet-needle, and the occasional manufacture of sponge cake.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Reading, Cake, Soul

  Thomas Wentworth HIGGINSON (1854). “Woman and her Wishes, etc. ... Second edition, with an appendix”, p.7

  7 Copy quote

• What instruction the baby brings to the mother!

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Mother, Baby, Instruction

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson (2007). “Outdoor Studies, Poems”, p.237, Reprint Services Corporation

  8 Copy quote

• In our methodical American life, we still recognize some magic in summer. Most persons at least resign themselves to being decently happy in June. They accept June. They compliment its weather. They complain of the earlier months as cold, and so spend them in the city; and they complain of the later months as hot, and so refrigerate themselves on some barren sea-coast. God offers us yearly a necklace of twelve pearls; most men choose the fairest, label it June, and cast the rest away.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Summer, Men, Weather

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson (2007). “Outdoor Studies, Poems”, p.55, Reprint Services Corporation

  9 Copy quote

• Lavish thousands of dollars on your baby clothes, and after all the child is prettiest when every garment is laid aside. That becoming nakedness, at least, may adorn the chubby darling of the poorest home.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Baby, Nature, Children

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1873). “Oldport Days”, p.218

  8 Copy quote

• Life is as inexorable as the sea.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Sea, Water, Life Is

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1900). “Studies in romance”

  5 Copy quote

• The test of an author is not to be found merely in the number of his phrases that pass current in the corner of newspapers... but in the number of passages that have really taken root in younger minds.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Taken, Writing, Roots

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1885). “Margaret Fuller Ossoli”, p.289, Ardent Media

  8 Copy quote

• There are no days in the whole round year more delicious than those which often come to us in the latter half of April... The sun trembles in his own soft rays... The grass in the meadow seems all to have grown green since yesterday.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Spring, Flower, Years

  "In a Fair Country".

  8 Copy quote

• If I were to choose among all gifts and qualities that which, on the whole, makes life pleasantest, I should select the love of children. No circumstance can render this world wholly a solitude to one who has this possession

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Children, Solitude, Quality

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson (2007). “Outdoor Studies, Poems”, p.245, Reprint Services Corporation

  17 Copy quote

• In ancient Boeotia brides were carried home in vehicles whose wheels were burned at the door, in token, that they would never again be needed.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Home, Doors, Wheels

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson (2012). “Women and the Alphabet A Series of Essays”, p.37, tredition

  4 Copy quote

• Character shows itself apart from genius as a special thing. The first point of measurement of any man is that of quality.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Character, Men, Special

  4 Copy quote

• The coarsest father gains a new impulse to labor from the moment of his baby's birth; he scarcely sees it when awake, and yet it is with him all the time. Every stroke he strikes is for his child. New social aims, new moral motives, come vaguely up to him.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Baby, Children, Father

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson (2007). “Outdoor Studies, Poems”, p.237, Reprint Services Corporation

  4 Copy quote

• How much that the world calls selfishness is only generosity with narrow walls,--a too exclusive solicitude to maintain a wife in luxury, or make one's children rich.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Children, Wall, Luxury

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson (2007). “Outdoor Studies, Poems”, p.234, Reprint Services Corporation

  9 Copy quote

• Many persons sigh for death when it seems far off, but the inclination vanishes when the boat upsets, or the locomotive runs off the track, or the measles set it.

  Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  Death, Running, Track

  7 Copy quote

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