James Russell Lowell Quotes

A wise man travels to discover himself.

Not failure, but low aim, is crime.

Reading enables us to see with the keenest eyes, to hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time.

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

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

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

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

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

The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accurst.

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.

One day with life and heart is more than time enough to find a world.

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

The heart forgets its sorrow and ache.

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.

And what they dare to dream of, date to do.

The idol is the measure of the worshipper.

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

The gift without the giver is rare.

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

Pride and weakness are Siamese twins.

The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.

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

I would hardly change the sorrowful words of the poets for their glad ones. Tears dampen the strings of the lyre, but they grow the tensor for it, and ring even the clearer and more ravishingly.

They talk about their Pilgrim blood, their birthright high and holy! a mountain-stream that ends in mud thinks is melancholy.

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.

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

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

True freedom is to share All the chains our brothers wear, And, with heart and hand, to be Earnest to make others free!

I don't believe in principle, but I do in interest.

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

For only by unlearning Wisdom comes.

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

The path of nature is, indeed, a narrow one, and it is only the immortals that seek it, and, when they find it, do not find themselves cramped therein.

The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude.

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

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

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

The pressure of public opinion is like the pressure of the atmosphere; you can't see it - but all the same, it is sixteen pounds to the square inch.

The purely Great Whose soul no siren passion could unsphere, Thou nameless, now a power and mixed with fate.

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.

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.

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

Freedom needs all her poets; it is they Who give her aspirations wings, And to the wiser law of music sway Her wild imaginings.

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.

The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment.

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

Time is, after all, the greatest of poets; and the sons of Memory stand a better chance of being the heirs of Fame.

That love for one, from which there doth not spring Wide love for all, is but a worthless thing.

My gran'ther's rule was safer 'n 't is to crow: Don't never prophesy - onless ye know.

In vain we call old notions fudge, And bend our conscience to our dealing; The Ten Commandments will not budge, And stealing will continue stealing.