Dorothea Dix

“Man is not made better by being degraded; he is seldom restrained from crime by harsh measures, except the principle of fear predominates in his character, and then he is never made radically better for its influence.”

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

“Rules must be established and enforced, and, as numbers are increased in prisons, the necessity for vigilance increases. These rules, let it be understood, may be kindly while firmly enforced. I would never suffer any exhibition of ill-temper or an arbitrary exercise of authority.”

“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.”

“My wish is to be known only thru my work.”

“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 child has ever known the country and has not twined hundreds of fragrant wreaths with the yellow shining cowslip and the more frail and delicate violet - mingling here and there green leaves culled from the odorous eglantine, or, as we more commonly call it, sweetbriar.”

“Think how slow would be your progress in learning without printed books: you could study only manuscripts, and those necessarily must be very few in number. Learn from this to value your books, and always handle them with care.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Nothing seems to me so likely to make people unhappy in themselves and at variance with others as the habit of killing time.”

“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.”

“It is of no use to commit whole pages to memory, merely to recite them once without hesitation; you must think of the meaning more than the words - of the ideas more than the language.”

“No blessing, no good, can follow in the path trodden by slavery.”

“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.”

“Steady, firm, and kind government of prisoners is the truest humanity and the best exercise of duty. It is with convicts as with children: unseasonable indulgence, indiscreetly granted, leads to mischiefs which we may deplore but cannot repair.”

“Pleasures take to themselves wings and fly away; true knowledge remains forever.”

“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.”

“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.”

“What greater bliss than to look back on days spent in usefulness, in doing good to those around us.”