The bee himself did not evade the schoolboy more than she evaded me, and even at this day I still stand somewhat bewildered, like the boy.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Authors & Writing
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
Topics: Religion
Pew things are more important to a community than the health of its women.—If strong is the frame of the mother, says a proverb, the son will give laws to the people.—And in nations where all men give laws, all men need mothers of strong frames.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Health
There is certainly no defense against adverse fortune which is, on the whole, so effectual as an habitual sense of humor.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Humor
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
Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Fresh, Originality
An easy thing, O Power Divine, To thank thee for these gifts of Thine, For summer’s sunshine, winter’s snow, For hearts that kindle, thoughts that glow; but when shall I attain to this. To thank Thee for the things I miss?
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Blessings
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
Topics: Intelligence
What are Raphael’s Madonnas but the shadow of a mother’s love, fixed in permanent outline forever?
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Mother, Mothers
Some wonder that children should be given to young mothers.—But what instruction does the babe bring to the mother!—She learns patience, self-control, endurance; her very arm grows strong so that she holds the dear burden longer than the father can.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
What are Raphael’s Madonnas but the shadow of a mother’s love, fixed in permanent outline forever?
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Mother
Great men are rarely isolated mountain-peaks; they are the summits of ranges.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Teamwork, Greatness, Isolation, Greatness & Great Things
In an audience of rough people a generous sentiment always brings down the house.—In the tumult of war both sides applaud a heroic deed.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Appreciation
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
Topics: Selfishness
The coarsest father gains a new impulse to labor from the moment of his baby’s birth.—Every stroke he strikes is for his child.—New social aims, and new moral motives come vaguely up to him.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Fields are won by those who believe in winning.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Confidence
Noble discontent is the path to heaven.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Discontent, Difficulties, Adversity
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Thomas Starr King American Unitarian Minister
- James Freeman Clarke American Unitarian Clergyman
- Edward Everett Hale American Unitarian Clergyman
- William Laurence Sullivan American Unitarian Clergyman
- Charles Sheldon American Christian Minister
- Russell Conwell American Baptist Minister
- George Boardman the Younger American Baptist Minister
- Scudder Parker American Minister
- Benjamin Mays American Minister
- Connie Zweig American Minister
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