Sarah Josepha Hale Quotes

A man is never more self satisfied than when he is confirming a favorite theory.

Happiness is, in truth, a very cheap thing when the heart will be contented to traffic with nature—art has quite a different price.

Though youth be past and beauty fled,
The constant heart its pledge redeems,
Like Box that guards the flowerless bed
And brighter from the contrast seems.

There are few sensations more painful than in the midst of deep grief, to know the season which we have always associated with mirth and rejoicing is at hand.

Rugged strength and radiant beauty—
These were one in nature's plan;
Humble toil and heavenward duty—
These will form the perfect man!

What a ready passport wealth gives its possessor to the good opinions of this world!

Crackers toasted or hard bread may be added a short time before the soup is wanted; but do not put in those libels on civilized cookery, called dumplings! One might about as well eat, with the hope of digesting, a brick from the ruins of Babylon, as one of the hard, heavy masses of boiled dough which usually pass under this name.

And you each gentle animal
In confidence may bind,
And make them follow at your call,
If you are always kind.

There is no influence so powerful as that of the mother. ... But next in rank and efficacy to that pure and holy source of moral influence, is that of the schoolmaster.

The violet bank, the moss-fringed seat
Beneath the drooping tree.

What in the rising man was industry and economy, becomes in the rich man parsimony and avarice.

Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow,
And every where that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go.

Americans have two ardent passions; the love of liberty, and love of distinction. These passions mutually stimulate and increase each other ; the enjoyment of equal rights as citizens giving every man a chance of becoming eminent, and that eminence being derived from living under a free government, the Americans are thus necessarily as ambitious of fame as they are tenacious of freedom.

What has made this nation great? Not its heroes, but its households.

A few hundred dollars will dry the weeping eyes of the most despairing damsel, and make her think the defection of her plighted swain a very lucky speculation—and so instead of breaking her own heart, she very coolly determines to break his credit, comforting herself with the thought that cash is more current than love.