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What instruction the baby brings to the mother!
Thomas Wentworth Higginson -
In our methodical American life, we still recognize some magic in summer. Most persons at least resign themselves to being decently happy in June. They accept June. They compliment its weather. They complain of the earlier months as cold, and so spend them in the city; and they complain of the later months as hot, and so refrigerate themselves on some barren sea-coast. God offers us yearly a necklace of twelve pearls; most men choose the fairest, label it June, and cast the rest away.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson
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The Englishman's strong point is his vigorous insularity; that of the American his power of adaptation. Each of these attitudes has its perils. The Englishman stands firmly on his feet, but he who merely does this never advances. The American's disposition is to step forward even at the risk of a fall.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson -
Genius is lonely without the surrounding presence of a people to inspire it.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson -
Travelers find virtue in a seeming minority in all other countries, and forget that they have left it in a minority at home.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson -
Noble discontent is the path to heaven.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson -
Do not waste a minute - not a second - in trying to demonstrate to others the merits of your performance. If your work does not vindicate itself, you cannot vindicate it.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson -
That genius is feeble which cannot hold its own before the masterpieces of the world.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson
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After all, when a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson -
The most fertile soil does not necessarily produce the most abundant harvest. It is the use we make of our faculties which renders them valuable.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson -
What are Raphael's Madonnas but the shadow of a mother's love, fixed in permanent outline forever?
Thomas Wentworth Higginson -
To be really cosmopolitan a man must be at home even in his own country.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson -
After all, when a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence. As Ruskin wrote in his earlier and better days, "No weight nor mass nor beauty of execution can outweigh one grain or fragment of thought.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson -
Fields are won by those who believe in the winning.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson