James Russell Lowell Quotes

Communism means barbarism.

Sorrow is the great idealizer.

The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change.

How little inventiveness there is in man, Grave copier of copies.

It was in making education not only common to all, but in some sense compulsory on all, that the destiny of the free republics of America was practically settled.

Be NOBLE! and the nobleness that liesIn other men, sleeping, but never dead,Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.

Take winter as you find him, and he turns out to be a thoroughly honest fellow; with no nonsense in him, which is a great comfort in the long-run.

Never did Poesy appear So full of heaven to me, as when I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear To the lives of coarsest men.

Earth's noblest thing,-a woman perfected.

The victory's in believing.

We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage.

Ez fer war, I call it murder,- There you hev it plain an' flat; I don't want to go no furder Than my Testyment fer that. . . . . . An' you 've gut to git up airly Ef you want to take in God.

These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred, Each softly lucent as a rounded moon; The diver Omar plucked them from their bed, Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread.

The future works out great men's destinies; The present is enough for common souls, Who, never looking forward, are indeed Mere clay wherein the footprints of their age Are petrified forever.

Humbleness is always grace; always dignity

The fireflies o'er the meadow In pulses come and go.

The right to be a cussed fool Is safe from all devices human, It's common (ez a gin'I rule) To every critter born of woman.

This goin' ware glory waits ye haint one agreeable feetur.

O visionary world, condition strange, Where naught abiding is but only change.

A beggar through the world am I, From place to place I wander by. Fill up my pilgrim's scrip for me, For Christ's sweet sake and charity.

It is good To lengthen to the last a sunny mood.

Reading Chaucer is like brushing through the dewy grass at sunrise.

Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, himself, his hungering neighbor and me.

Ef you want peace, the thing you've gut to du Is jes' to show you're up to fightin', tu.

Good heavens, of what un costly material is our earthly happiness composed... if we only knew it. What incomes have we not had from a flower, and how unfailing are the dividends of the seasons.

It is not without reason that fame is awarded only after death. The cloud-dust of notoriety which follows and envelops the men who drive with the wind bewilders contemporary judgment.

May is a pious fraud of the almanac.

God is not dumb, that he should speak no more; If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor.

We look at death through the cheap-glazed windows of the flesh, and believe him the monster which the flawed and cracked glass represents him.

There is only one thing better than tradition and that is the original and eternal life out of which all tradition takes its rise.

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

Not suffering, but faint heart, is worst of woes.

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

O thou, whose days are yet all spring, Faith, blighted once, is past retrieving; Experience is a dumb, dead thing; The victory's in believing.

No sincere desire of doing good need make an enemy of a single human being; that philanthropy has surely a flaw in it which cannot sympathize with the oppressor equally as with the oppressed.

It is not a great Xerxes army of words, but a compact Greek ten thousand that march safely down to posterity.

If the devil take a less hateful shape to us than to our fathers, he is as busy with us as with them.

Most long lives resemble those threads of gossamer, the nearest approach to nothing unmeaningly prolonged, scarce visible pathways of some worm from his cradle to his grave.

Not but wut abstract war is horrid, I sign to thet with all my heart, But civilysation doos git forrid Sometimes, upon a powder-cart.

Life is the jailer, death the angel sent to draw the unwilling bolts and set us free.

It is singular how impatient men are with overpraise of others, how patient of overpraise of themselves; and yet the one does them no injury, while the other may be their ruin.

Faith in God, faith in man, faith in work: this is the short formula in which we may sum up the teachings of the founders of New England,--a creed ample enough for this life and the next.

All thoughtful men are solitary and original in themselves.

Not as all other women are Is she that to my soul is dear; Her glorious fancies come from far, Beneath the silver evening star, And yet her heart is ever near.

What men call luck Is the prerogative of valiant souls, The fealty life pays its rightful kings.

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

Of my merit On that pint you yourself may jedge: All is, I never drink no sperit, Nor I haint never signed no pledge.

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

Christ was the first true democrat that ever breathed, as the old dramatist Dekkar said he was the first true gentleman.

Here come the hum the golden bees Underneath full blossomed trees, At once with glowing fruit and flowers crowned.