James Russell Lowell - True Quotes

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The wisest man could ask no more of Fate
Than to be simple, modest, manly, true,
Safe from the Many—honored by the Few;
To count as naught in World or Church or State;
But inwardly in secret to be great.

James Russell Lowell
Beauty hath no true glass, except it be in the sweet privacy of loving eyes.

James Russell Lowell
True love is but a humble, low born thing,
And hath its food served up in earthenware;
It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand,
Through the every-dayness of this workday world.

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
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
General C. is a dreffle smart man;
He's been on all sides that give places or pelf;
But consistency still was a part of his plan,—
He's been true to one party, an' that is himself.

James Russell Lowell
The true ideal is not opposed to the real but lies in it; and blessed are the eyes that find it.

James Russell Lowell
Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how;
Everything is happy now,
Everything is upward striving;
'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,—
'Tis the natural way of living:
Who knows whither the clouds have fled?
In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake;
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed,
The heart forgets its sorrow and ache;
The soul partakes the season's youth,
And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe
Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth,
Like burnt-out craters healed with snow.

James Russell Lowell
Here was a type of the true elder race,
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.

James Russell Lowell
To put more faith in lies and hate than truth and love, is the true atheism.

James Russell Lowell
Is true Freedom but to break
Fetters for our own dear sake,
And, with leathern hearts, forget
That we owe mankind a debt? No! true freedom is to share
All the chains our brothers wear,
And, with heart and hand, to be
Earnest to make others free!

James Russell Lowell
He who esteems the Virginia reel A bait to draw saints from their spiritual weal, And regards the quadrille as a far greater knavery Than crushing His African children with slavery, Since all who take part in a waltz or cotillon Are mounted for hell on the devil's own pillion, Who, as every true orthodox Christian well knows, Approaches the heart through the door of the toes.

James Russell Lowell
The true historical genius, to our thinking, is that which can see the nobler meaning of events that are near him, as the true poet is he who detects the divine in the casual; and we somewhat suspect the depth of his insight into the past who cannot recognize the godlike of to-day under that disguise in which it always visits us.

James Russell Lowell