Lydia Sigourney Quotes

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

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

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.

The soul of woman lives in love.

Vigorous exercise will often fortify a feeble constitution.

Youth would be too happy, might it add to its own beauty and felicity the wisdom and experience of riper years. Were it possible for it to realize the worth of time, as life's receding hours reveal it, how rapidly would it press on towards perfection!

Figure to yourself what the year would sustain were the spring taken away: such a loss do they sustain who trifle in youth.

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

An appearance of delicacy is inseparable from sweetness and gentleness of character.

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.

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

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.

O ye whose years unfolding fair Are fresh with youth, and free from care, Should vice and indolence desire The garden of your souls to hire, No parleys hold-reject the suit, Nor let one seed the soil pollute. My child their first approach beware, With firmness break the insidious snare, Lest as the acorns grew and throve Into a sun-encircled grove, Thy sins, a dark o'ershadowing tree Shut out the light of Heaven from thee.

Something will be gathered from the tablets of the most faultless day for regrets.

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.

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

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

The vanity of shining in conversation is usually subversive of its own desires.

There is a lore simple and sure, that asks no discipline of weary years--the language of the soul, told through the eye.

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.

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.

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.