James Russell Lowell Quotes

333 Sourced Quotes

A nature wise With finding in itself the types of all, With watching from the dim verge of the time What things to be are visible in the gleams Thrown forward on them from the luminous past, Wise with the history of its own frail heart, With reverence and sorrow, and with love, Broad as the world, for freedom and for man.

James Russell Lowell
Enthusiasm begets enthusiasm, eloquence produces conviction for the moment; but it is only by truth to Nature and the everlasting institutions of mankind that those abiding influences are won that enlarge from generation to generation.

James Russell Lowell
God is the only being who has time enough; but a prudent man, who knows how to seize occasion, can commonly make a shift to find as much as he needs.

James Russell Lowell
What a man pays for bread and butter is worth its market value, and no more. What he pays for love's sake is gold indeed, which has a lure for angels' eyes, and rings well upon God's touchstone.

James Russell Lowell
Be He nowhere else, God is in all that liberates and lifts, in all that humbles, sweetens, and consoles.

James Russell Lowell
Rippling through thy branches goes the sunshine, Among thy leaves that palpitate forever, And in the sea, a pining nymph had prisoned The soul, once of some tremulous inland river, Quivering to tell her woe, but ah! dumb, dumb forever.

James Russell Lowell
Human nature has a much greater genius for sameness than for originality.

James Russell Lowell
Who is it needs such flawless shafts as fate? What archer of his arrows is so choice, or hits the white so surely?

James Russell Lowell
Against the windows the storm comes dashing, Through tattered foliage the hail tears crashing, The blue lightning flashes, The rapid hail clashes... The thunder is rumbling And crashing and crumbling...

James Russell Lowell
Year by year, more and more of the world gets disenchanted. Even the icy privacy of the arctic and antarctic circles is invaded. We have played Jack Horner with our earth, till there is never a plum left in it.

James Russell Lowell
Faith in God, faith in man, faith in work: this is the short formula in which we may sum up the teachings of the founders of New England,--a creed ample enough for this life and the next.

James Russell Lowell
The right to be a cussed fool Is safe from all devices human, It's common (ez a gin'I rule) To every critter born of woman.

James Russell Lowell
Never did Poesy appear So full of heaven to me, as when I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear To the lives of coarsest men.

James Russell Lowell
For Humanity sweeps onward: where today the martyr stands, On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands; Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn, While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn.

James Russell Lowell
Life may be given in many ways, and loyalty to truth be sealed as bravely in the closet as the field.

James Russell Lowell
Whatever we have dared to think, That dare we also say. In John Pickering

James Russell Lowell
Old gold has a civilizing virtue which new gold must grow old to be capable of secreting.

James Russell Lowell
God does not weigh criminality in our scales. We have one absolute, with the seal of authority upon it; and with us an ounce is an ounce, and a pound a pound. God's measure is the heart of the offender,--a balance which varies with every one of us, a balance so delicate that a tear cast in the other side may make the weight of error kick the beam.

James Russell Lowell
There is surely room for yet another schoolmaster when a score of seers advertise themselves in Boston newspapers.

James Russell Lowell
Ah, in this world, where every guiding thread Ends suddenly in the one sure centre, death, The visionary hand of Might-have-been Alone can fill Desire's cup to the brim!

James Russell Lowell
In general those who nothing have to say Contrive to spend the longest time in doing it.

James Russell Lowell
Get but the truth once uttered, and 'tis like
A star new-born that drops into its place
And which, once circling in its placid round,
Not all the tumult of the earth can shake.

James Russell Lowell
If the devil take a less hateful shape to us than to our fathers, he is as busy with us as with them.

James Russell Lowell
Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime.

James Russell Lowell
Practical application is the only mordant which will set things in the memory. Study without it is gymnastics, and not work, which alone will get intellectual bread.

James Russell Lowell
Some kind of pace may be got out of the eeriest jade by the near prospect of oats; but the thoroughbred has the spur in his blood.

James Russell Lowell
A woman's love Is mighty, but a mother's heart is weak, And by its weakness overcomes.

James Russell Lowell
Through aisles of long-drawn centuries my spirit walks in thought.

James Russell Lowell
The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change; Then let it come: I have no dread of what Is called for by the instinct of mankind. Nor think I that God's world would fall apart Because we tear a parchment more or less. Truth is eternal, but her effluence, With endless change, is fitted to the hour; Her mirror is turned forward, to reflect The promise of the future, not the past. I do not fear to follow out the truth...

James Russell Lowell
For men in earnest have no time to waste In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth.

James Russell Lowell