James Russell Lowell Quotes
Poet, Diplomat, Essayist, Writer, Literary critic, Journalist
Fate loves the fearless.
Not failure, but low aim, is crime.
All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.
Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold- bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief.
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.
Blessed are they who have nothing to say and who cannot be persuaded to say it.
A weed is no more than a flower in disguise, Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes.
The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.
Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.
Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.
The surest plan to make a man is, think him so.
Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.
There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.
Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do that day, which must be done, whether you like it or not.
Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.
In creating, the only hard thing is to begin: a grass blade's no easier to make than an oak.
Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.
Sincerity is impossible, unless it pervade the whole being, and the pretence of it saps the very foundation of character.
A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.
Democracy is the form of government that gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
Endurance is the crowning quality, And patience all the passion of great hearts.
It is by presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of man is tested.
Good luck is the willing handmaid of a upright and energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.
Reputation is only a candle, of wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit.
The greatest homage we can pay to truth, is to use it.
And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days.
Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.
True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgment.
The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers is that which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience.
Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.
To educate the intelligence is to expand the horizon of its wants and desires.
Death is delightful. Death is dawn, The waking from a weary night Of fevers unto truth and light.
Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.
Light is the symbol of truth.
The mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts, and dwell a hermit anywhere.
Who's not sat tense before his own heart's curtain.
No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself.
Where one person shapes their life by precept and example, there are a thousand who have shaped it by impulse and circumstances.
Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime. Not failure, but low aim is crime.
Incredulity robs us of many pleasures, and gives us nothing in return.
Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how.
Fortune is the rod of the weak, and the staff of the brave.
What a sense of security in an old book which time has criticized for us.
Children are God's Apostles, sent forth, day by day, to preach of love, and hope, and peace.
Once to every person and nation come the moment to decide. In the conflict of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.
Each day the world is born anew for him who takes it rightly.
An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.
Freedom is the only law which genius knows.
He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, and not progress, the highest lesson in statecraft.
There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.
The heart forgets its sorrow and ache.
If youth be a defect, it is one that we outgrow only too soon.
Every person born into this world their work is born with them.
Folks never understand the folks they hate.
In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.
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.
On one issue at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women.
There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.
Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed.
It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.
The eye is the notebook of the poet.
What men prize most is a privilege, even if it be that of chief mourner at a funeral.