James Russell Lowell Quotes
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In creating, the only hard thing is to begin: a grass blade's no easier to make than an oak.
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Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed.
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Every person born into this world their work is born with them.
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Our Pilgrim stock wuz pithed with hardihood.
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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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Fate loves the fearless.
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It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.
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One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.
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The traitor to humanity is the traitor most accursed;Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod,Than to be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to God!
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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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What men prize most is a privilege, even if it be that of chief mourner at a funeral.
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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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A weed is no more than a flower in disguise, Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes.
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Sincerity is impossible, unless it pervade the whole being, and the pretence of it saps the very foundation of character.
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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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Freedom is the only law which genius knows.
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Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.
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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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Though old the thought and oft expressed,'Tis his at last who says it best.
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Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.
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A reading-machine, always wound up and going,He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.
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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.
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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.
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All thoughts that mould the age beginDeep down within the primitive soul.