James Russell Lowell - Truth Quotes

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Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, and cries reproachful: Was it then my praise, and not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth; I claim of thee the promise of thy youth.

James Russell Lowell
Truth is quite beyond the reach of satire. There is so brave a simplicity in her that she can no more be made ridiculous than an oak or a pine.

James Russell Lowell
Truth always has a bewitching savor of newness in it, and novelty at the first taste recalls that original sweetness to the tongue; but alas for him who would make the one a substitute for the other.

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

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

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
Praise follows truth afar off, and only overtakes her at the grave; plausibility clings to her skirts and holds her back till then

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

James Russell Lowell
Great truths are portions of the soul of man;
Great souls are portions of eternity.

James Russell Lowell
Evil springs up, and flowers, and bears no seed, And feeds the green earth with its swift decay, Leaving it richer for the growth of truth.

James Russell Lowell
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side.

James Russell Lowell
Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone is strong,
And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng
Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong.

James Russell Lowell
New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth
Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,
Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key.

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
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
They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.

James Russell Lowell
The beauty of his better self lives on
In minds he touched with fire, in many an eye
He trained to Truth's exact severity;
He was a teacher: why be grieved for him
Whose living word still stimulates the air?
Of Louis Agassiz

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
Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart.

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
Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed. She is said to lie at the bottom of a well, for the very reason, perhaps, that whoever looks down in search of her sees his own image at the bottom, and is persuaded not only that he has seen the goddess, but that she is far better looking than he had imagined.

James Russell Lowell
Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified.

James Russell Lowell