Dorothea Dix

“They say, 'Nothing can be done here!' I reply, 'I know no such word in the vocabulary I adopt!'”

“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.”

“Society during the last hundred years has been alternately perplexed and encouraged respecting the two great questions: how shall the criminal and pauper be disposed of in order to reduce crime and reform the criminal on the one hand and, on the other, to diminish pauperism and restore the pauper to useful citizenship?”

“Those who do wrong very often think others are censuring them, when they are not even thought of.”

“'Know,' says a wise writer, the historian of kings, 'Know the men that are to be trusted'; but how is this to be? The possession of knowledge involves both time and opportunities. Neither of these are 'handservants at command.'”

“That statesman is indeed happy who can count as his friends the really honest and consistent, the true Patriots, and the men of honorable thought.”

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

“Life is not to be expended in vain regrets. No day, no hour, comes but brings in its train work to be performed for some useful end - the suffering to be comforted, the wandering led home, the sinner reclaimed. Oh! How can any fold the hands to rest and say to the spirit, 'Take thine ease, for all is well!'”

“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 duties of a teacher are neither few nor small, but they elevate the mind and give energy to the character.”

“I must study alone, as I am condemned to do every thing alone, I believe, in this life.”

“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.”

“With care and patience, people may accomplish things which, to an indolent person, would appear impossible.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The fact is that, in all prisons everywhere, cruelties on the one hand and injudicious laxity of discipline on the other have at times appeared and will, at intervals, be renewed except the most vigilant oversight is maintained.”

“I believe the best mode of aiding convicts is so to apportion their tasks in prison as to give to the industrious the opportunity of earning a sum for themselves by 'over-work.' A man usually values that most for which he has labored; he uses that most frugally which he has toiled hour by hour and day by day to acquire.”

“If we had only those things which are procured with ease and freedom from danger, we should find the comforts and luxuries, if not many of the necessaries of life, considerably diminished.”

“Floral emblems have been often adopted. The houses of York and Lancaster had their roses, the Bourbons of France, the fleur-de-lis, Scotland her thistle, and Ireland her shamrock.”