James Russell Lowell Quotes (165 Quotes)

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

All kin' o' smily round the lips, An' teary round the lashes.

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.

On one issue at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women.

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

A reading machine, always wound up and going, he mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.

Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.

Endurance is the crowning quality, And patience all the passion of great hearts.

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

Under the yaller pines I house, When sunshine makes 'em all sweet-scented, An' hear among their furry boughs The baskin' west-wind purr contented.

This goin' ware glory waits ye haint one agreeable feetur.

From lower to the higher next, Not to the top, is Nature's text And embryo Good, to reach full stature, Absorbs the Evil in its nature.

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

The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers is that which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience.

Pride of origin, whether high or low, springs from the same principle in human nature one is but the positive, the other the negative, pole of a single weakness.

I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.

To win the secret of a weed's plain heart.

The clear, sweet singer with the crown of snow Not whiter than the thoughts that housed below.

Fate loves the fearless.

The wisest man could ask no more of fate Than to be simple, modest, manly, true, Safe from the many, honored by the few Nothing to court in Church, or World, or State, But inwardly in secret to be great.

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

He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, and not progress, the highest lesson in statecraft.

The greatest homage we can pay to truth, is to use it.

Soft-heartedness, in times like these, Shows sof'ness in the upper story.

If I were asked what book is better than a cheap book, I should answer that there is one book better than a cheap book,and that is a book honestly come by.

Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold- bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief.

Two meanings have our lightest fantasies, One of the flesh, and of the spirit one.

They are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak. ...... They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three.

To educate the intelligence is to expand the horizon of its wants and desires.

I don't believe in princerple, But oh I du in interest.

Ez fer war, I call it murder, There you hev it plain an' flat I don't want to go no furder Than my Testyment fer that. .... . An' you 've gut to git up airly Ef you want to take in God.

We look at death through the cheap-glazed windows of the flesh, and believe him the monster which the flawed and cracked glass represents him.

There is no work of genius which has not been the delight of mankind, no word of genius to which the human heart and soul have not sooner or later responded.

Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified.

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

The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment.

Moliere Not a deed would he do, Not a word would he utter, Till he's weighed its relation To plain bread and butter.

In Lifes small things be resolute and great To keep thy muscle trained Knowst thou when Fate Thy measure takes or when shell say to thee, I find thee worthy do this deed for me.

Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.

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.

Nature fits all her children with something to do.

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.

Each day the world is born anew for him who takes it rightly.

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.

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.

Who's not sat tense before his own heart's curtain.

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.

Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.

Great truths are portions of the soul of man Great souls are portions of eternity.