James Russell Lowell Quotes

My gran'ther's rule was safer 'n 't is to crow: Don't never prophesy - onless ye know.

In vain we call old notions fudge, And bend our conscience to our dealing; The Ten Commandments will not budge, And stealing will continue stealing.

Endurance is the crowning quality.

While tenderness of feeling and susceptibility to generous emotions are accidents of temperament, goodness is an achievement of the will and a quality of the life.

As one lamp lights another, nor grows less,So nobleness enkindleth nobleness.

And I honor the man who is willing to sink half his present repute for the freedom to think, and, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t' other half for the freedom to speak.

The pressure of public opinion is like the pressure of the atmosphere; you can't see it - but all the same, it is sixteen pounds to the square inch.

Nature fits all her children with something to do, he who would write and can't write, can surely review.

Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.

Death is delightful. Death is dawn, The waking from a weary night Of fevers unto truth and light.

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how.

Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime. Not failure, but low aim is crime.

There is something magnificent in having a country to love.

A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.

Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, First pledge of blithesome May, Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold.

But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet. Lessen like sound of friends departing feet; And death is beautiful as feet of friend. Coming with welcome at our journey's end.

Stern men with empires in their brains.

The intellect has only one failing, which, to be sure, is a very considerable one. It has no conscience.

And the poorest twig on the elm-tree was ridged inch deep with pearl.

The Don Quixote of one generation may live to hear himself called the savior of society by the next.

What men prize most is a privilege, even if it be that of chief mourner at a funeral.

Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint.

They are slaves who fear to speak, for the fallen and the weak.

Life may be given in many ways, and loyalty to truth be sealed as bravely in the closet as the field.

It is mediocrity which makes laws and sets mantraps and spring-guns in the realm of free song, saying thus far shalt thou go and no further.

The quiet tenderness of Chaucer, where you almost seem to hear the hot tears falling, and the simple choking words sobbed out.

Fanaticism, or, to call it by its milder name, enthusiasm, is only powerful and active so long as it is aggressive. Establish it firmly in power, and it becomes conservatism, whether it will or no.

This imputation of inconsistency is one to which every sound politician and every honest thinker must sooner or later subject himself. The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion.

Human nature has a much greater genius for sameness than for originality.

Ah, men do not know how much strength is in poise, That he goes the farthest who goes far enough.

Praise follows truth afar off, and only overtakes her at the grave; plausibility clings to her skirts and holds her back till then

For there's nothing we read of in torture's inventions, Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of intentions.

Once to every person and nation come the moment to decide. In the conflict of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.

Violet! sweet violet! Thine eyes are full of tears; Are they wet Even yet With the thought of other years?

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave.

Evil is a far more cunning and persevering propagandist than good, for it has no inward strength, and is driven to seek countenance and sympathy.

Evil springs up, and flowers, and bears no seed, And feeds the green earth with its swift decay, Leaving it richer for the growth of truth.

A weed is no more than a flower in disguise, Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes.

God'll send the bill to you.

What a sense of security in an old book which time has criticized for us!

The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change.

It is singular how impatient men are with overpraise of others, how patient of overpraise of themselves; and yet the one does them no injury, while the other may be their ruin.

It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.

Sorrow is the great idealizer.

No price is set on the lavish summer; June may be had by the poorest comer.

How little inventiveness there is in man, Grave copier of copies.

Here come the hum the golden bees Underneath full blossomed trees, At once with glowing fruit and flowers crowned.

Christ was the first true democrat that ever breathed, as the old dramatist Dekkar said he was the first true gentleman.

Where one person shapes their life by precept and example, there are a thousand who have shaped it by impulse and circumstances.