James Russell Lowell Quotations

One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.

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.

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.

To educate the intelligence is to expand the horizon of its wants and desires.

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.

No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself.

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.

A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.

In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.

All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how.

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.

Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.

Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.

And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days.

A weed is no more than a flower in disguise, Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes.

Endurance is the crowning quality, And patience all the passion of great hearts.

Good luck is the willing handmaid of a upright and energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.

Once to every person and nation come the moment to decide. In the conflict of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.

It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.

Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.

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.

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.

The greatest homage we can pay to truth, is to use it.

It is by presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of man is tested.

Children are God's Apostles, sent forth, day by day, to preach of love, and hope, and peace.

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.

If youth be a defect, it is one that we outgrow only too soon.

Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed.

Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime. Not failure, but low aim is crime.

True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgment.

There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.

The mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts, and dwell a hermit anywhere.

Democracy is the form of government that gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.

The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.

Sincerity is impossible, unless it pervade the whole being, and the pretence of it saps the very foundation of character.

There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.

Every person born into this world their work is born with them.

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.

Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold- bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief.

There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.

Blessed are they who have nothing to say and who cannot be persuaded to say it.

Freedom is the only law which genius knows.

In creating, the only hard thing is to begin: a grass blade's no easier to make than an oak.

Death is delightful. Death is dawn, The waking from a weary night Of fevers unto truth and light.

I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.

He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, and not progress, the highest lesson in statecraft.

Who's not sat tense before his own heart's curtain.

Where one person shapes their life by precept and example, there are a thousand who have shaped it by impulse and circumstances.

What men prize most is a privilege, even if it be that of chief mourner at a funeral.

What a sense of security in an old book which time has criticized for us.

Fortune is the rod of the weak, and the staff of the brave.

Incredulity robs us of many pleasures, and gives us nothing in return.

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

The surest plan to make a man is, think him so.

Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.

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.

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.

A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.

Democracy give every man the right to be his own oppressor.

A reading machine, always wound up and going, he mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.

The foolish and the dead never change their opinions.

The brain can be easy to buy, but the heart never comes to market.

Not what we give, but what we share, for the gift without the giver is bare.

The question of common sense is always: 'what is it good for?' - a question which would abolish the rose and be answered triumphantly by the cabbage.

Folks never understand the folks they hate.

Light is the symbol of truth.

A weed is no more than a flower in disguise.

The dandelions and buttercups gild all the lawn: the drowsy bee stumbles among the clover tops, and summer sweetens all to me.

The flowers or weeds that spring up tomorrow are in the seeds we sow today. The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.

Life is a sheet of paper white / Whereon each one of us may write / His word or two, and then comes night.

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.

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.

In the earliest ages science was poetry, as in the latter poetry has become science.

Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this, that you are dreadfully like other people.

I willingly confess to so great a partiality for trees as tempts me to respect a man in exact proportion to his respect for them.

No price is set on the lavish summer; June may be had by the poorest comer.

The better part of every man's education is that which he gives himself.

Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof.

The devil loves nothing better than the intolerance of reformers.

Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is.

What visionary tints the year puts on, When falling leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, tremulous hair!

There is something magnificent in having a country to love.

Endurance is the crowning quality...

Fate loves the fearless.

Not failure, but low aim, is crime.

The heart forgets its sorrow and ache.

The right of individual property is no doubt the very corner-stone of civilization, as hitherto understood; but I am a little impatient of being told that property is entitled to exceptional consideration because it bears all the burdens of the state. It bears those, indeed, which can be most easily borne, but poverty pays with its person the chief expenses of war, pestilence, and famine.

Violet! sweet violet! Thine eyes are full of tears; Are they wet Even yet With the thought of other years?

As one lamp lights another, nor grows less,So nobleness enkindleth nobleness.

Nature fits all her children with something to do, he who would write and can't write, can surely review.

And I honor the man who is willing to sink half his present repute for the freedom to think, and, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t' other half for the freedom to speak.

No man is born into the world whose work Is not born with him. There is always work, And tools to work withal, for those who will; And blessed are the horny hands of toil.

The one thing finished in this hasty world.

Like streams that keep a summer mind Snow-hid in Jenooary.

A woman's love Is mighty, but a mother's heart is weak, And by its weakness overcomes.

The idol is the measure of the worshipper.

Laborin' man an' laborin' woman Hev one glory an' one shame; Ev'y thin' thet' s done inhuman Injers all on 'em the same.