Top 33 Dorothea Dix Quotes

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.

Nothing seems to me so likely to make people unhappy in themselves and at variance with others as the habit of killing time.

Happy are those who dwell apart from the harrowing tumults of public life!

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.

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

Rules must be established and enforced, and, as numbers are increased in prisons, the necessity for vigilance increases. These rules, let it be understood, may be kindly while firmly enforced. I would never suffer any exhibition of ill-temper or an arbitrary exercise of authority.

My wish is to be known only thru my work.

My happiest hours are spent in school, surrounded by those I hope to benefit.

I am contracting continually a debt of gratitude which time will never see canceled. There is a treasury from which it will be repaid, but I do not dispense its stores.

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!’

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.

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.

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.

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.

The olive branch has been consecrated to peace, palm branches to victory, the laurel to conquest and poetry, the myrtle to love and pleasure, the cypress to mourning, and the willow to despondency.

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.

What greater bliss than to look back on days spent in usefulness, in doing good to those around us.

The fact is that, in all prisons everywhere, cruelties on the one hand and injudicious laxity of discipline on the other have at times appeared and will, at intervals, be renewed except the most vigilant oversight is maintained.

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 believe the best mode of aiding convicts is so to apportion their tasks in prison as to give to the industrious the opportunity of earning a sum for themselves by ‘over-work.’ A man usually values that most for which he has labored; he uses that most frugally which he has toiled hour by hour and day by day to acquire.

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.

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.

‘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.’

They say, ‘Nothing can be done here!’ I reply, ‘I know no such word in the vocabulary I adopt!’

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.

It is of no use to commit whole pages to memory, merely to recite them once without hesitation; you must think of the meaning more than the words – of the ideas more than the language.

I would be cautious in embracing or rejecting doctrines. Had they been essential to our salvation, they would have been more explicitly declared in the Gospels, where we are so well taught the practice of every good word and work.

There is, I think, great difficulty in writing of one’s self: it is almost impossible to present subjects where the chief actor must be conspicuous and not seem to be, or really be, egotistical.

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

Man is not made better by being degraded; he is seldom restrained from crime by harsh measures, except the principle of fear predominates in his character, and then he is never made radically better for its influence.

The capsules of the geranium furnish admirable barometers. Fasten the beard, when fully ripe, upon a stand, and it will twist itself or untwist, according as the air is moist or dry.

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.

Men need knowledge in order to overpower their passions and master their prejudices.