Dorothea Dix
Dorothea Dix
Dorothea Lynde Dixwas an American activist on behalf of the indigent insane who, through a vigorous program of lobbying state legislatures and the United States Congress, created the first generation of American mental asylums. During the Civil War, she served as a Superintendent of Army Nurses...
ProfessionCivil Rights Leader
Date of Birth4 April 1802
CityHampden, ME
awaken control diminish increase prisoners proportion strengthen terrors
While we diminish the stimulant of fear, we must increase to prisoners the incitements of hope, in proportion as we extinguish the terrors of the law, we should awaken and strengthen the control of the conscience.
men use hours
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.
fashion long choices
[To a woman who claimed she'd rather be dead than unconfined and unfashionable:] My dear, if you continue to lace as tightly as you do now, you will not long have the privilege of choice. You will be both dead and out of fashion.
cutting design society
The tapestry of history has no point at which you can cut it and leave the design intelligible.
lying thinking bed
I think even lying on my bed I can still do something.
truth-is consideration highest
But the truth is the highest consideration.
running intelligent men
Brains are still unfashionable for women to wear, and it has always been proof of women's superiority that the more intelligent a man is, the more women admire him, while the bigger fool a woman is, the more men run after her.
compassion fund particular
I have no particular love for my species, but own to an exhaustless fund of compassion
cheer sadness heal
Be of good cheer, for sadness cannot heal the national wounds.
compassion want cold
in proportion as my own discomfort has increased, my conviction of necessity to search into the wants of the friendless and afflicted has deepened. If I am cold, they too are cold; if I am weary, they are distressed; if I am alone, they are abandoned.
hands order years
Society, during the last hundred years, has been alternately perplexed and encouraged, respecting the two great questions -how shall the criminal and pauper be disposed of, in order to reduce crime and reform the criminal on the one hand, and, on the other, to diminish pauperism and restore the pauper to useful citizenship?
character men principles
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.