Explore Quotes by Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Great men are rarely isolated mountain peaks; they are the summits of ranges.

There is a noble and a base side to every history.

When a thought takes one's breath away, a grammar lesson seems an impertinence.

The test of an author is not to be found merely in the number of his phrases that pass current in the corner of newspapers... but in the number of passages that have really taken root in younger minds.

All... religions show the same disparity between belief and practice, and each is safe till it tries to exclude the rest.

There is no defense against adverse fortune which is so effectual as an habitual sense of humor.

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?

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.

Great men are rarely isolated mountain-peaks; they are the summits of ranges.

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.

After all, when a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence.

To be really cosmopolitan a man must be at home even in his own country.

Fields are won by those who believe in the winning.

It is no discredit to Walt Whitman that he wrote Leaves of Grass, only that he did not burn it afterwards.

Noble discontent is the path to heaven.

Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes.

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.

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.