Lowell James Russell Quotes

A wise man travels to discover himself. — James Russell Lowell

The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change. — James Russell Lowell

All thoughtful men are solitary and original in themselves. — James Russell Lowell

The ultimate result of protecting fools from their folly is to fill the planet full of fools. — James Russell Lowell

Though old the thought and oft exprest, Tis his at last who says it best. — James Russell Lowell

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. — James Russell Lowell

They have rights who dare maintain them. — James Russell Lowell

And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days. — James Russell Lowell

The surest plan to make a Man
Is, think him so. — James Russell Lowell

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

One learns more metaphysics from a single temptation than from all the philosophers. — James Russell Lowell

All share in the government of the world was denied for centuries to perhaps the ablest, certainly the most tenacious race that had ever lived in it — James Russell Lowell

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

Wealth may be an excellent thing, for it means power, and it means leisure, it means liberty. — James Russell Lowell

New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth. — James Russell Lowell

Sentiment is intellectualized emotion; emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals by the fancy. — James Russell Lowell

Reading enables us to see with the keenest eyes, to hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time. — James Russell Lowell

Freedom needs all her poets; it is they
Who give her aspirations wings,
And to the wiser law of music sway
Her wild imaginings. — James Russell Lowell

Of my merit On that pint you yourself may jedge: All is, I never drink no sperit, Nor I haint never signed no pledge. — James Russell Lowell

It is only by instigation of the wrongs of men that what we call the rights of men become turbulent and dangerous. — James Russell Lowell

Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave. — James Russell Lowell

He who keeps his faith only, cannot be discrowned. — James Russell Lowell

There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business. — James Russell Lowell

Silence is sorrow's best food. — James Russell Lowell

Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed. — James Russell Lowell

O reputation! dearer far than life. — James Russell Lowell

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

To educate the intelligence is to expand the horizon of its wants and desires. — James Russell Lowell

Be NOBLE! and the nobleness that liesIn other men, sleeping, but never dead,Will rise in majesty to meet thine own. — James Russell Lowell

Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees Bending to counterfeit a breeze ... — James Russell Lowell

It may be glorious to write Thoughts that shall glad the two or three High souls, like those far stars that come in sight Once in a century. — James Russell Lowell

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

Fools, when their roof-tree falls, think it doomsday. — James Russell Lowell

Who speaks the truth stabs falsehood to the heart. — James Russell Lowell

That best academy, a mother's knee. — James Russell Lowell

To be young is surely the best, if the most precarious, gift of life. — James Russell Lowell

The opening of the first grammar school was the opening of the first trench against monopoly in Church and State. — James Russell Lowell

Fate loves best such syllables as are sweet and sonorous on the tongue. — James Russell Lowell

Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint. — James Russell Lowell

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

He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing. — James Russell Lowell

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor. — James Russell Lowell

Two meanings have our lightest fantasies,- One of the flesh, and of the spirit one. — James Russell Lowell

The English Puritans pulled down church and state to rebuild Zion on the ruins, and all the while it was not Zion, but America, they were building. — James Russell Lowell

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. — James Russell Lowell

Our American republic will endure only as long as the ideas of the men who founded it continue dominant. — James Russell Lowell

That pernicious sentiment, "Our country, right or wrong." — James Russell Lowell

Aspiration sees only one side of every question; possession many. — James Russell Lowell

God is not dumb, that he should speak no more;
If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness
And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor. — James Russell Lowell

They talk about their Pilgrim blood, their birthright high and holy! a mountain-stream that ends in mud thinks is melancholy. — James Russell Lowell

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

Not suffering, but faint heart, is worst of woes. — James Russell Lowell

Each day the world is born anew for him who takes it rightly. — James Russell Lowell

On Lincoln: A profound common sense is the best genius for statesmanship. — James Russell Lowell

O visionary world, condition strange, Where naught abiding is but only change. — James Russell Lowell

May is a pious fraud of the almanac A ghastly parody of real Spring Shaped out of snow and breathed with eastern wind. — James Russell Lowell

Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves. — James Russell Lowell

There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends. — James Russell Lowell

The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment. — James Russell Lowell

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

A word once vulgarized can never be rehabilitated. — James Russell Lowell

Humbleness is always grace; always dignity — James Russell Lowell

The green grass floweth like a stream
Into the oceans's blue. — James Russell Lowell

May is a pious fraud of the almanac. — James Russell Lowell

Love lives on, and hath a power to bless when they who loved are hidden in the grave. — James Russell Lowell

Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship. — James Russell Lowell

The material of thought re-acts upon the thought itself. — James Russell Lowell

Not only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not. — James Russell Lowell

Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving. — James Russell Lowell

When I was a beggarly boy, And lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend nor a toy, But I had Aladdin's lamp ... — James Russell Lowell

History is clarified experience. — James Russell Lowell

That cause is strong which has, not a multitude, but one strong man behind it. — James Russell Lowell

All that hath been majestical
In life or death, since time began,
Is native in the simple heart of all,
The angel heat of man. — James Russell Lowell

A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic. — James Russell Lowell

God is the only being who has time enough; but a prudent man, who knows how to seize occasion, can commonly make a shift to find as much as he needs. — James Russell Lowell

Time is, after all, the greatest of poets; and the sons of Memory stand a better chance of being the heirs of Fame. — James Russell Lowell

Endurance is the crowning quality, And patience all the passion of great hearts. — James Russell Lowell

If God made poets for anything, it was to keep alive the traditions of the pure, the holy, and the beautiful. — James Russell Lowell

An angel stood and met my gaze, Through the low doorway of my tent; The tent is struck, the vision stays; I only know she came and went. — James Russell Lowell

Comparative criticism teaches us that moral and aesthetic defects are more nearly related than is commonly supposed. — James Russell Lowell

There is surely room for yet another schoolmaster when a score of seers advertise themselves in Boston newspapers. — James Russell Lowell

Freedom is the only law which genius knows. — James Russell Lowell

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

Not but wut abstract war is horrid, I sign to thet with all my heart, But civilysation doos git forrid Sometimes, upon a powder-cart. — James Russell Lowell

Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons. — James Russell Lowell

A friendship counting nearly forty years is the finest kind of shade-tree I know. — James Russell Lowell

To have greatly dreamed precludes low ends. — James Russell Lowell

Old gold has a civilizing virtue which new gold must grow old to be capable of secreting. — James Russell Lowell

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

In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking. — James Russell Lowell

Children are God's Apostles, sent forth, day by day, to preach of love, and hope, and peace. — James Russell Lowell

Many make the household but only one the home. — James Russell Lowell

It is the vain endeavor to make ourselves what we are not that has strewn history with so many broken purposes and lives left in the rough. — James Russell Lowell

Truly there is a tide in the affairs of men; but there is no gulf-stream setting forever in one direction. — James Russell Lowell

The gift without the giver is rare. — James Russell Lowell

Tiny Salmoneus of the air His mimic bolts the firefly threw. — James Russell Lowell

We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage. — James Russell Lowell

He gives only the worthless gold who gives from a sense of duty. — James Russell Lowell

Keats longed for fame, but longed above all to deserve it. — James Russell Lowell

Life is the jailer, death the angel sent to draw the unwilling bolts and set us free. — James Russell Lowell