Quotes from work
Little Things

Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney

"Little Things" is a 19th-century poem by Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney, written in Boston, Massachusetts.

“Little deeds of kindness,
Little words of love,
Make our pleasant earth below
Like the heaven above.”

Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney Little Things

"Little Things" (1845) as quoted in Our Woman Workers: Biographical Sketches of Women Eminent in the Universalist Church for Literary, Philanthropic and Christian Work (1881) by E. R. Hanson. These were the final words of the poem in the original publication, but later versions published anonymously by other authors appended various additions to this. It has also often appeared credited to Carney in a variant form:
Little deeds of kindness,
Little words of love,
Help to make earth happy
Like the heaven above.

“Little drops of water,
Little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean
And the pleasant land. Thus the little minutes,
Humble though they be,
Make the mighty ages
Of eternity.”

Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney Little Things

"Little Things" in the Myrtle (1845). This poem came to be published uncredited as a children's rhyme and hymn in many 19th century magazines and books, sometimes becoming variously attributed to Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, Daniel Clement Colesworthy, and Frances S. Osgood, but the earliest publications of it clearly are those of Carney, according to Our Woman Workers: Biographical Sketches of Women Eminent in the Universalist Church for Literary, Philanthropic and Christian Work (1881) by E. R. Hanson, as well as Familiar Quotations 9th edition (1906) edited by John Bartlett, The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999) by Elizabeth Knowles and Angela Partington, and The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), ed. Fred R. Shapiro.