Laura E. Richards Quotes

• I do not believe in confining children to things they understand. They want, and they need, the thing they do not understand.

  Laura E. Richards

  Children, Believe, Needs

  7 Copy quote

• We know our neighbors - so far as we have the right to know them. We hear of their joys and their sorrows, and hasten to make them ours so far as we may. Life in a small town is like a layer cake. One gets the whole of it, frosted top, lemon filling and all.

  Laura E. Richards

  Cake, Joy, Sorrow

  9 Copy quote

• Once there was an elephant Who tried to use the telephant. No! no! I mean an elephone Who tried to use the telephone. Dear me, I am not certain quite That even now I've got it right.

  Laura E. Richards

  Fun, Mean, Elephants

  "Eletelephony" l. 1 (ca. 1880)

  6 Copy quote

• I would rather read poetry than eat my dinner any day. It has been so all my life.

  Laura E. Richards

  Poetry, Dinner, Has Beens

  8 Copy quote

• To thousands of elder women in the late sixties and early seventies [the private women's club movement] came like a new gospel ofactivity and service. They had reared their children and seen them take flight; moreover, they had fought through the war, their hearts in the field, their fingers plying needle and thread. They had been active in committees and commissions, the country over; had learned to work with and beside men, finding joy and companionship and inspiration in such work. How could they go back to the chimney-corner life of the fifties?

  Laura E. Richards

  Country, Children, War

  6 Copy quote

• And the storm went on. It roared, it bellowed, and it screeched: it thumped and it kerwhalloped. The great seas would come bunt agin the rocks, as if they were bound to go right though to Jersey City, which they used to say was the end of the world.

  Laura E. Richards

  Loss, Rocks, Sea

  7 Copy quote

• Give the child good books, then let it alone! Don't plough and harrow its brain, or stretch it on Procrustes-beds of standardization, simplification, and what not!

  Laura E. Richards

  Children, Book, Reading

  6 Copy quote

• I eat till, honest, I felt every button on all my clo'es. The folks where we were stayin' were the old-fashioned hospitable kind; they didn't let you off till your jaws struck work and wouldn't wag no more.

  Laura E. Richards

  Buttons, Wags, Honest

  4 Copy quote

• You couldn't find nobody deader, not if you'd sarched for a week. Why, door nails, and Julius Caesar, and things o' that description, would ha' been lively compared with your poor ma when I see her. Lively! that's what they'd ha' been.

  Laura E. Richards

  Death, Doors, Nails

  4 Copy quote

• read the Bible to the children, until they are old enough to read for themselves ... The Bible, not nursery versions of it. There is a Bible in words of one syllable; I am happy to say I have never seen it. Such a monstrosity should be put alongside of the Rhyming Bible, of which, I believe, only one copy is in existence.

  Laura E. Richards

  Bible, Children, Believe

  4 Copy quote

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin