James Russell Lowell - Life Quotes

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As life runs on, the road grows strange
With faces new, and near the end
The milestones into headstones change,
'Neath every one a friend.

James Russell Lowell
Their problem was how to adapt English principles and precedents to the new conditions of American life, and they solved it with singular discretion. They put as many obstacles as they could contrive, not in the way of the people's will, but of their whim.

James Russell Lowell
To be young is surely the best, if the most precarious, gift of life.

James Russell Lowell
Over all life broods Poesy, like the calm blue sky with its motherly, rebuking face. She is the great reformer, and where the love of her is strong and healthy, wickedness and wrong cannot long prevail.

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
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
Most men make the voyage of life as if they carried sealed orders which they were not to open till they were fairly in mid-ocean.

James Russell Lowell
There is only one thing better than tradition and that is the original and eternal life out of which all tradition takes its rise.

James Russell Lowell
What men call luck Is the prerogative of valiant souls, The fealty life pays its rightful kings.

James Russell Lowell
New conditions of life will stimulate thought and give new forms to its expression.

James Russell Lowell
While tenderness of feeling and susceptibility to generous emotions are accidents of temperament, goodness is an achievement of the will and a quality of the life.

James Russell Lowell
The only conclusive evidence of a man's sincerity is that he gives himself for a principle. Words, money, all things else, are comparatively easy to give away; but when a man makes a gift of his daily life and practice, it is plain that the truth, whatever it may be, has taken possession of him.

James Russell Lowell
All that hath been majestical
In life or death, since time began,
Is native in the simple heart of all,
The angel heat of man.

James Russell Lowell
Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides
Into the silent hollow of the past;
What is there that abides
To make the next age better for the last?

James Russell Lowell
In all literary history there is no such figure as Dante, no such homogeneousness of life and works, such loyalty to ideas, such sublime irrecognition of the unessential.

James Russell Lowell
And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays:
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,
An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, grasping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers.

James Russell Lowell
One day with life and heart
Is more than time enough to find a world.

James Russell Lowell
Wut's words to them whose faith an' truth
On war's red techstone rang true metal;
Who ventered life an' love an' youth
For the gret prize o' death in battle?

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
There is no self-delusion more fatal than that which makes the conscience dreamy with the anodyne of lofty sentiments, while the life is groveling and sensual

James Russell Lowell
In life's small things be resolute and great
To keep thy muscle trained: know'st thou when Fate
Thy measure takes, or when she'll say to thee,
"I find thee worthy; do this deed for me"?

James Russell Lowell
But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet
Lessen like sound of friends' departing feet;
And Death is beautiful as feet of friend
Coming with welcome at our journey's end.
For me Fate gave, whate'er she else denied,
A nature sloping to the southern side;
I thank her for it, though when clouds arise
Such natures double-darken gloomy skies.

James Russell Lowell
Life is the jailer, death the angel sent to draw the unwilling bolts and set us free.

James Russell Lowell