James Russell Lowell Quotes
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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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Poetry is something to make us wiser and better, by continually revealing those types of beauty and truth, which God has set in all men's souls.
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The little that we doIs but half-nobly true;With our laborious hivingWhat men call treasure, and the gods call dross,Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving,Only secure in every one's conniving,A long account of nothings paid with loss.
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Light is the symbol of truth.
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A marciful Providunce fashioned us hollerO' purpose thet we might our principles swaller.
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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.
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A reading-machine, always wound up and going,He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.
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There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business.
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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.
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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 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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A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.
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Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.
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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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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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And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days.
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Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.
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The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude.
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Who's not sat tense before his own heart's curtain.
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Soft-heartedness, in times like these,Shows sof'ness in the upper story.
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Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.
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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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The thing we long for, that we areFor one transcendent moment.
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There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.