Sarah Josepha Hale Quotes

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

Riches are always overestimated; the enjoyment they give is more in the pursuit than the possession.

There is hardly a more heart-thrilling pleasure enjoyed by mortals, than that which parents feel when seeing their child first being able to 'catch knowledge of objects.'

Some one has called flowers the poetry of earth. They are only its Lyrical poetry. Water is the grand Epic of creation; and there is not a human soul but feels the influence of its majesty, its power or its beauty.

Why is it that water, so monotonous in its characteristics, should nevertheless, possess a charm for every mind? I believe it is chiefly because it bears the impress of the Creator, which we feel neither the power of time or of man can efface or alter.

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.

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.

There is something in the decay of nature that awakens thought, even in the most trifling mind. The person who can regard the changes in the forest foliage,—that can watch the slow circles of the dead leaf, as it falls from the bough of some lofty tree, till it mingles with the thousands already covering the ground beneath, and not moralize is—not a person that I would advise to retire to the country, in search of happiness. He or she had better stay in the city and be amused. Those who cannot think, have, in my opinion, a necessity (which goes very far towards creating a right) for amusement.

Her husband requested she would read, and she determined to read; her husband wished her to talk, and she resolved to talk. ... Then she had the habit into which your poor conversationalists usually fall, namely, asking questions.

A day of bliss is quickly told, </br> A thousand would not make us old </br> As one of sorrow doth— </br> It is by cares, by woes and tears, </br> We round the sum of human years——

Readers soon tire of prefaces, and skip them, and so the labor of writing them is lost.

All that I intended was, that self-control, in every station and to every individual, is indispensable, if people would retain that equanimity of mind, which depending on self-respect, is the essential of contentment and happiness.

In this age of innovation, perhaps no experiment will have an influence more important on the character and happiness of our society, than the granting to females the advantages of ... education. The honor of this triumph ... belongs to the men of America. They appear willing to risk the hazard of proving, experimentally, whether that degree of literature, which only can qualify woman to become ... an instructive as well as agreeable friend, be compatible with the cheerful discharge of her domestic duties, and that delicacy of feeling, and love of retirement, which nature so obviously imposes on the sex.