Dorothea Dix

I shall be well enough when I get to Kentucky or Alabama. The tonic I need is the tonic of opposition. That always sets me on my feet.

Of my English friends, I should find language too poor to speak the just praise and the excellence which shines in their characters and lives.

All my habits through life have been singularly removed from any condition of reliance on others, and the feeling - right or wrong - that aloneness is my proper position has prevailed since my early childhood, no doubt nourished and strengthened by many and quick-following bereavements.

I am contracting continually a debt of gratitude which time will never see canceled. There is a treasury from which it will be repaid, but I do not dispense its stores.

There is, in our nature, a disposition to indulgence, a secret desire to escape from labor, which, unless hourly combated, will overcome and destroy the best faculties of our minds and paralyze our most useful powers.

The fabled origin of the laurel is this. Daphne, daughter of the river Peneus, offended by the persecutions of Apollo, implored succour of the gods, who changed her into a laurel tree. Apollo crowned his head with the leaves and ordered that forever after, the tree should be sacred to him.

The lovely daisy, so justly celebrated by European poets, is not a native of our soil; we know it well, however, by cultivation in our gardens and green houses; besides, we are disposed to remember it for the sake of those who have sung its praises in immortal verse.

A virtuous character is likened to an unblemished flower. Piety is a fadeless bud that half opens on earth and expands through eternity. Sweetness of temper is the odor of fresh blooms, and the amaranth flowers of pure affection open but to bloom forever.

What an enthusiastic devotion is that which sends a man from the attractions of home, the ties of neighbourhood, the bonds of country, to range plains, valleys, hills, mountains, for a new flower.

The capsules of the geranium furnish admirable barometers. Fasten the beard, when fully ripe, upon a stand, and it will twist itself or untwist, according as the air is moist or dry.

Indulged habits of dependence create habits of indolence, and indolence opens the portal to petty errors, to many degrading habits, and to vice and crime with their attendant train of miseries.

The great benefactors of individuals and of communities are the enlightened educators: the wise-teaching, mental and moral instructors and exemplars of our times.

Men need knowledge in order to overpower their passions and master their prejudices.

By all means, have you give great attention to your arithmetic, as its advantages are so many and important.

As you have learnt something of time, value and make a proper use of it. Once past, it knows no return; how necessary, then, that you spend it in improving your mind and fitting it for future happiness and usefulness.

To me, the avocation of a teacher has something elevating and exciting. While surrounded by the young, one may always be doing good.

There is, I think, great difficulty in writing of one's self: it is almost impossible to present subjects where the chief actor must be conspicuous and not seem to be, or really be, egotistical.

I would be cautious in embracing or rejecting doctrines. Had they been essential to our salvation, they would have been more explicitly declared in the Gospels, where we are so well taught the practice of every good word and work.

Happy are those who dwell apart from the harrowing tumults of public life!

I have little taste for fashionable dissipations, cards, and dancing; the theatre and tea parties are my aversion, and I look with little envy on those who find their enjoyment in such transitory delights, if delights they may be called.