James Russell Lowell Quotes

The pine is the mother of legends.

When I was a beggarly boy, And lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend nor a toy, But I had Aladdin's lamp.

The true ideal is not opposed to the real but lies in it; and blessed are the eyes that find it.

He gives only the worthless gold who gives from a sense of duty.

In all literary history there is no such figure as Dante, no such homogeneousness of life and works, such loyalty to ideas, such sublime irrecognition of the unessential.

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

But better far it is to speak One simple word, which now and then Shall waken their free nature in the weak And friendless sons of men.

At the devil's booth are all things sold. Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold.

In life's small things be resolute and great To keep thy muscle trained; Know'st thou when Fate Thy measure takes, or when she'll say to thee, "I find thee worthy; do this deed for me?"

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

Better one bite at forty, of truths bitter rind, than the hot wine that gushed from the vintage of twenty.

If one waits for the right time to come before writing, the right time never comes.

Truth only needs to be for once spoken out; and there's such music in her, such strange rhythm, as makes men's memories her joyous slaves.

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.

We cannot but think there is something like a fallacy in Mr. Buckle's theory that the advance of mankind is necessarily in the direction of science, and not in that of morals.

The story of any one man's real experience finds its startling parallel in that of every one of us.

He who keeps his faith only, cannot be discrowned.

To fail at all is to fail utterly.

Comparative criticism teaches us that moral and aesthetic defects are more nearly related than is commonly supposed.

All that hath been majestical In life or death, since time began, Is native in the simple heart of all, The angel heat of man.

Large charity doth never soil, but only whitens soft white hands.

That cause is strong which has, not a multitude, but one strong man behind it.

Love lives on, and hath a power to bless when they who loved are hidden in the grave.

Truly there is a tide in the affairs of men; but there is no gulf-stream setting forever in one direction.

The very gnarliest and hardest of hearts has some musical strings in it; but they are tuned differently in every one of us.

Be He nowhere else, God is in all that liberates and lifts, in all that humbles, sweetens, and consoles.

Who is it needs such flawless shafts as fate? What archer of his arrows is so choice, or hits the white so surely?

Not only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not.

The soil out of which such men as he are made is good to be born on, good to live on, good to die for and to be buried in.

Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.

How I do love the earth. I feel it thrill under my feet. I feel somehow as if it were conscious of my love, as if something passed into my dancing blood from it.

If I were asked what book is better than a cheap book, I should answer that there is one book better than a cheap book, - and that is a book honestly come by.

Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.

Earth's biggest country 's gut her soul, An' risen up earth's greatest nation.

Heaven is neither here nor there to me. Everywhere and nowhere. Just not in between, But I believe in Heaven.

There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one, Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on.

Men! whose boast it is that ye Come of fathers brave and free, If there breathe on earth a slave, Are ye truly free and brave?

The pale and quiet moon Makes her calm forehead bare, And the last fragments of the storm, Like shattered rigging from a fight at sea, Silent and few, are drifting over me.

Hush! Still as death, The tempest holds his breath As from a sudden will; The rain stops short, but from the eaves You see it drop, and hear it from the leaves, All is so bodingly still.

Certainly it is no shame to a man that he should be as nice about his country as his sweetheart, yet it would not be wise to hold everyone an enemy who could not see her with our own enchanted eyes.

[B]ut in literature, it should be remembered, a thing always becomes his at last who says it best, and thus makes it his own.

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

The one thing finished in this hasty world.

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

To genius life never grows commonplace.

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

Did man e'er live Saw priest or woman yet forgive?

A marciful Providunce fashioned us holler O' purpose thet we might our principles swaller.

Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons.

Ye come and go incessant; we remain Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past; Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot, Of faith so nobly realized as this.