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 LarcomA tattered copy of Johnson's large Dictionary was a great delight to me, on account of the specimens of English versifications which I found in the Introduction. I learned them as if they were so many poems. I used to keep this old volume close to my pillow; and I amused myself when I awoke in the morning by reciting its jingling contrasts of iambic and trochaic and dactylic metre, and thinking what a charming occupation it must be to "make up" verses.
Lucy LarcomA drop of water, if it could write out its own history, would explain the universe to us.
Lucy LarcomLike 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 LarcomWhoever 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 LarcomIf an apple blossom or a ripe apple could tell its own story, it would be, still more than its own, the story of the sunshine that smiled upon it, of the winds that whispered to it, of the birds that sang around it, of the storms that visited it, and of the motherly tree that held it and fed it until its petals were unfolded and its form developed.
Lucy Larcom