Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Thomas Wentworth Higginson (American Reformer, Editor)

Thomas Wentworth Storrow Higginson (1823–1911) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, clergyman, and editor. He headed the first black regiment to serve in the Civil War, and later supported women’s suffrage and supported many female writers.

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Higginson graduated from Harvard Divinity School. He became a Unitarian minister, sermonizing a social gospel too liberal even for Unitarians. Two years later, his progressive beliefs on temperance, women’s rights, and abolitionism forced him to leave his congregation.

Higginson retired from the ministry in 1858. During the Civil War, he was colonel 1862–64 of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers; it comprised of ex-slaves and was the first African-American regiment in the Union Army. He recorded his wartime experiences in Army Life in a Black Regiment (1870.) Later, Higginson was a member of the Massachusetts Legislature 1880–81.

Higginson was a close friend of numerous writers, particularly Emily Dickinson. He corresponded with her for 20 years as her mentor and, after her death, co-edited the first published selection of her works (1890.) Higginson wrote biographies of Margaret Fuller, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Greenleaf Whittier, and other poets.

Higginson’s other books include Common Sense about Women (1881) and Concerning All of Us (1892.) His works were collected as The Magnificent Activist (2000.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Thomas Wentworth Higginson

The bee himself did not evade the schoolboy more than she evaded me, and even at this day I still stand somewhat bewildered, like the boy.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Authors & Writing

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.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Religion

Pew things are more important to a community than the health of its women.—If strong is the frame of the mother, says a proverb, the son will give laws to the people.—And in nations where all men give laws, all men need mothers of strong frames.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Health

There is certainly no defense against adverse fortune which is, on the whole, so effectual as an habitual sense of humor.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Humor

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

Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Fresh, Originality

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; but when shall I attain to this. To thank Thee for the things I miss?
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Blessings

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
Topics: Intelligence

What are Raphael’s Madonnas but the shadow of a mother’s love, fixed in permanent outline forever?
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Mother, Mothers

Some wonder that children should be given to young mothers.—But what instruction does the babe bring to the mother!—She learns patience, self-control, endurance; her very arm grows strong so that she holds the dear burden longer than the father can.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson

What are Raphael’s Madonnas but the shadow of a mother’s love, fixed in permanent outline forever?
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Mother

Great men are rarely isolated mountain-peaks; they are the summits of ranges.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Teamwork, Greatness, Isolation, Greatness & Great Things

In an audience of rough people a generous sentiment always brings down the house.—In the tumult of war both sides applaud a heroic deed.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Appreciation

How much that the world calls selfishness is only generosity with narrow walls—a too exclusive solicitude to maintain a wife in luxury, or make one’s children rich.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Selfishness

The coarsest father gains a new impulse to labor from the moment of his baby’s birth.—Every stroke he strikes is for his child.—New social aims, and new moral motives come vaguely up to him.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Fields are won by those who believe in winning.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Confidence

Noble discontent is the path to heaven.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Topics: Discontent, Difficulties, Adversity

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