DOROTHEA DIX

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

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.

I worship talents almost. I sinfully dare mourn that I possess them not.

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.

Time passed solely in the pursuit of pleasure leaves no solid enjoyment for the future; but from the hours you spend in reading and studying useful books, you will gather a golden harvest in future years.

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.

Why not, when it can be done without exposure or expense, let me rescue some of America's miserable children from vice and guilt?

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

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 rose is the flower and handmaiden of love - the lily, her fair associate, is the emblem of beauty and purity.

Your minds may now be likened to a garden, which will, if neglected, yield only weeds and thistles; but, if cultivated, will produce the most beautiful flowers, and the most delicious fruits.

I may be too craving of that rich gift, the power of sharing other minds. I have drunk deeply, long, and oh! how blissfully at this fountain in a foreign clime. Hearts met hearts, minds joined with minds; and what were the secondary trials of pain to the enfeebled, suffering body when daily was administered the soul's medicine and food!

I am never less disposed to sadness than when ill and alone. Sometimes I have fancied that it was the nature of my disease to create a rising, elastic state of mind, but be that as it will (I speak solemnly), the hour of bodily suffering is to me the hour of spiritual joy. It is then that most I feel my dependence on God and his power to sustain.

I shall try and effect all that is before me to perform; and God, I think, will surely give me strength for His work so long as He directs my line of duty.

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.

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 French, perhaps more than any other nation, cherish the memory of their dead by ornamenting their places of sepulture with the finest flowers, often renewing the garlands and replacing such plants as decay with vigorous and costly ones.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

We are not sent into this world mainly to enjoy the loveliness therein, nor to sit us down in passive ease; no, we were sent here for action. The soul that seeks to do the will of God with a pure heart, fervently, does not yield to the lethargy of ease.

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