Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Thomas Wentworth Higginsonwas an American Unitarian minister, author, abolitionist, and soldier. He was active in the American Abolitionism movement during the 1840s and 1850s, identifying himself with disunion and militant abolitionism. He was a member of the Secret Six who supported John Brown. During the Civil War, he served as colonel of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, the first federally authorized black regiment, from 1862–1864. Following the war, Higginson devoted much of the rest of his life to fighting for...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTheologian
Date of Birth22 December 1823
CountryUnited States of America
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.
All... religions show the same disparity between belief and practice, and each is safe till it tries to exclude the rest. Test each sect by its best or its worst as you will, by its high-water mark of virtue or its low-water mark of vice. But falsehood begins when you measure the ebb of any other religion against the flood-tide of your own. There is a noble and a base side to every history.
Nothing can hide from me the conviction that an immortal soul needs for its sustenance something more than visiting, and gardening, and novel-reading, and crochet-needle, and the occasional manufacture of sponge cake.
Genius is lonely without the surrounding presence of a people to inspire it.
That genius is feeble which cannot hold its own before the masterpieces of the world.
Character shows itself apart from genius as a special thing. The first point of measurement of any man is that of quality.
Many persons sigh for death when it seems far off, but the inclination vanishes when the boat upsets, or the locomotive runs off the track, or the measles set it.
Lavish thousands of dollars on your baby clothes, and after all the child is prettiest when every garment is laid aside. That becoming nakedness, at least, may adorn the chubby darling of the poorest home.
How many lessons of faith and beauty we should lose, if there were no winter in our year!
An easy thing, O Power Divine, To thank thee for these gifts of Thine, For summer's sunshine, winter's snow, For hearts that kindle thoughts that glow...
If I were to choose among all gifts and qualities that which, on the whole, makes life pleasantest, I should select the love of children. No circumstance can render this world wholly a solitude to one who has this possession
What are Raphael's Madonnas but the shadow of a mother's love, fixed in permanent outline forever?
After all, when a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence.
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.