“In a world where there is so much to be done. I felt strongly impressed that there must be something for me to do.”
- Dorothea Dix
“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!'”
“To me, the avocation of a teacher has something elevating and exciting. While surrounded by the young, one may always be doing good.”
“Always remember those things that tend to strengthen and improve your understanding. You cannot learn without attention, neither retain those lessons that you have once learnt without frequently reflecting upon and reviewing them in your mind; by this means, things long past will remain impressed upon your memory.”
“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.”
“Pleasures take to themselves wings and fly away; true knowledge remains forever.”
“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.”
“'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.'”
“I have had so much at heart. Defeated, not conquered; disappointed, not discouraged. I have but to be more energetic and more faithful in the difficult and painful vocation to which my life is devoted.”
“Happy are those who dwell apart from the harrowing tumults of public life!”
“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.”
“I must study alone, as I am condemned to do every thing alone, I believe, in this life.”
“My happiest hours are spent in school, surrounded by those I hope to benefit.”
“I was early taught by sorrow to shed tears, and now when sudden joy lights up, or any unexpected sorrow strikes my heart, I find it difficult to repress the full and swelling tide of feeling.”
