James Russell Lowell Quotes
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I first drew in New England's air, and from her hardy breastSucked in the tyrant-hating milk that will not let me rest.
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In the scales of the destinies brawn will never weigh so much as brain. Our healing is not in the storm or in the whirlwind, it is not in monarchies, or aristocracies, or democracies, but will be revealed by the still small voice that speaks to the conscience and the heart, prompting us to a wider and wiser humanity.
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What a sense of security in an old book which time has criticized for us.
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Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime. Not failure, but low aim is crime.
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Earth's biggest country 's gut her soul,An' risen up earth's greatest nation.
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Wut's words to them whose faith an' truthOn war's red techstone rang true metal;Who ventered life an' love an' youthFor the gret prize o' death in battle?
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Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.
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Their problem was how to adapt English principles and precedents to the new conditions of American life, and they solved it with singular discretion. They put as many obstacles as they could contrive, not in the way of the people's will, but of their whim.
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What men prize most is a privilege, even if it be that of chief mourner at a funeral.
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Fate loves the fearless.
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Though old the thought and oft expressed,'Tis his at last who says it best.
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All thoughts that mould the age beginDeep down within the primitive soul.
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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.
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A reading-machine, always wound up and going,He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.
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Nature, they say, doth dote,And cannot make a manSave on some worn-out plan,Repeating us by rote.
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The greatest homage we can pay to truth, is to use it.
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The wisest man could ask no more of FateThan to be simple, modest, manly, true,Safe from the Many - honored by the Few;To count as naught in World or Church or State;But inwardly in secret to be great.
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Freedom is the only law which genius knows.
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Our slender life runs rippling by, and glidesInto the silent hollow of the past;What is there that abidesTo make the next age better for the last?
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They are slaves who fear to speakFor the fallen and the weak;They are slaves who will not chooseHatred, scoffing, and abuse,Rather than in silence shrinkFrom the truth they needs must think;They are slaves who dare not beIn the right with two or three.
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They come transfigured back,Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,Beautiful evermore, and with the raysOf morn on their white Shields of Expectation!
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He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, and not progress, the highest lesson in statecraft.
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It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is, and what shifts we make to escape thinking. There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds.
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The question of common sense is always 'What is it good for?'—a question which would abolish the rose and be answered triumphantly by the cabbage.