Lydia Sigourney Quotes

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

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.

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.

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.

Fear is the white lipp'd sire Of subterfuge and treachery.

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.

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.

The glorified spirit of the infant is as a star to guide the mother to its own blissful clime.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

The soul of woman lives in love.

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

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.

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

Praise to our Father-God, High praise in solemn lay, Alike for what His hand hath given, And what it takes away.

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!

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

As a dedicated, successful writer, Lydia Sigourney violated essential elements of the very gender roles she celebrated. In the process, she offered young, aspiring women writers around the country an example of the possibilities of achieving both fame and economic reward.

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

Vigorous exercise will often fortify a feeble constitution.

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.