James Russell Lowell Quotes
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A reading-machine, always wound up and going,He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.
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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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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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The greatest homage we can pay to truth, is to use it.
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Light is the symbol of truth.
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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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There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.
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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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The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude.
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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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Good luck is the willing handmaid of a upright and energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.
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You've gut to git up airlyEf you want to take in God.
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The child is not mine as the first was,I cannot sing it to rest,I cannot lift it up fatherlyAnd bliss it upon my breast;Yet it lies in my little one's cradleAnd sits in my little one's chair,And the light of the heaven she's gone toTransfigures its golden hair.
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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 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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Nature, they say, doth dote,And cannot make a manSave on some worn-out plan,Repeating us by rote.
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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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A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.
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Death is delightful. Death is dawn, The waking from a weary night Of fevers unto truth and light.
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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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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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The thing we long for, that we areFor one transcendent moment.
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Soft-heartedness, in times like these,Shows sof'ness in the upper story.
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And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days.