James Russell Lowell - God Quotes

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For though he builds glorious temples, 'tis odd
He leaves never a doorway to get in a god.

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

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
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
God is not dumb, that he should speak no more;
If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness
And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor.

James Russell Lowell
Whom the heart of man shuts out, Sometimes the heart of God takes in, And fences them all round about With silence mid the worlds loud din.

James Russell Lowell
God's livery is a very plain one; but its wearers have good reason to be content. If it have not so much gold-lace about it as Satan's, it keeps out foul weather better, and is besides a great deal cheaper.

James Russell Lowell
Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it;
We are happy now because God wills it.

James Russell Lowell
God makes sech nights, all white an' still,
Fur'z you can look or listen,
Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill,
All silence an' all glisten.

James Russell Lowell
God, give us Peace! not such as lulls to sleep,
But sword on thigh and brow with purpose knit!
And let our Ship of State to harbor sweep,
Her ports all up, her battle lanterns lit,
And her leashed thunders gathering for their leap.

James Russell Lowell
You've gut to git up airly
Ef you want to take in God.

James Russell Lowell
Darkness is strong, and so is Sin,
But surely God endures forever.

James Russell Lowell
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.

James Russell Lowell
The little that we do
Is but half-nobly true;
With our laborious hiving
What 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.

James Russell Lowell
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

James Russell Lowell
If God made poets for anything, it was to keep alive the traditions of the pure, the holy, and the beautiful.

James Russell Lowell
Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes, — they were souls that stood alone,
While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone,
Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline
To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine,
By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design.

James Russell Lowell
For a cap and bells our lives we pay,
Bubbles we earn with a whole soul's tasking:
'Tis heaven alone that is given away,
'Tis only God may be had for the asking.

James Russell Lowell