James Russell Lowell Quotes & Sayings

In creating the only hard thing's to begin — James Russell Lowell

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. — James Russell Lowell

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 ... — James Russell Lowell

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

Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just; Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified. — James Russell Lowell

Like streams that keep a summer mind Snow-hid in Jenooary. — James Russell Lowell

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

Tyranny is always weakness — James Russell Lowell

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. — James Russell Lowell

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. — James Russell Lowell

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. — James Russell Lowell

Many-sidedness of culture makes our vision clearer and keener in particulars. — James Russell Lowell

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

With every anguish of our earthly part The spirit's sight grows clearer. — James Russell Lowell

'T is heaven alone that is given away; 'T is only God may be had for the asking. — James Russell Lowell

A friendship counting nearly forty years is the finest kind of shade-tree I know. — James Russell Lowell

Not failure, but low aim, is crime. — James Russell Lowell

Great truths are portions of the soul of man; Great souls are portions of eternity. — James Russell Lowell

The fireflies o'er the meadow In pulses come and go. — James Russell Lowell

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

A father of the church said that property was theft, many centuries before Proudhon was born. Bourdaloue reaffirmed it. Montesquieu was the inventor of national workshops and of the theory that the state owed every man a living. Nay, was not the church herself the first organized democracy? — James Russell Lowell

O reputation! dearer far than life. — James Russell Lowell

Slow are the steps of freedom, but her feet turn never backward. — James Russell Lowell

The realm of death seems an enemy's country to most men, on whose shores they are loathly driven by stress of weather; to the wise man it is the desired port where he moors his bark gladly, as in some quiet haven of the Fortunate Isles; it is the golden west into which his sun sinks, and, sinking, casts back a glory upon the leaden cloud-tack which had darkly besieged his day. — James Russell Lowell

There are two kinds of genius. The first and highest may be said to speak out of the eternal to the present, and must compel its age to understand it; the second understands its age, and tells it what it wishes to be told. — James Russell Lowell

To put more faith in lies and hate than truth and love, is the true atheism. — James Russell Lowell

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

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

He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing. — James Russell Lowell

It is beginning to be doubtful whether Parliament and Congress sit in Westminster and Washington, or in the editorial rooms of the leading journals,
so thoroughly is everything debated before the authorized and responsible debaters get on their legs. — James Russell Lowell

Beauty hath no true glass, except it be in the sweet privacy of loving eyes. — James Russell Lowell

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. — James Russell Lowell

Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us; The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us, We bargain for the graves we lie in; Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold ... 'T is heaven alone that is given away, 'T is only God may be had for the asking; There is no price set on the lavish summer, And June may be had by the poorest comer. — James Russell Lowell

All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action. — James Russell Lowell

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

Who's not sat tense before his own heart's curtain. — James Russell Lowell

A ginooine statesman should be on his guard, if he must hev beliefs, not to b'lieve 'em too hard. — James Russell Lowell

A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic. — James Russell Lowell

Better to me the poor mans crust,
Better the blessing of the poor,
Though I turn me empty from his door;
That is no true alms which the hand can hold;
He gives nothing but worthless gold
Who gives from a sense of duty;
But he who gives a slender mite,
And gives to that which is out of sight,
That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty
Which runs through all and doth all unite, -
The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms,
The heart outstretches its eager palms,
For a god goes with it and makes it store
To the soul that was starving in darkness before. — James Russell Lowell

With every step of the recent traveler our inheritance of the wonderful is diminished. Those beautiful pictured notes of the possible are redeemed at a ruinous discount in the hard coin of the actual. — James Russell Lowell

I love her with a love as still As a broad river's peaceful might, Which by high tower and lowly mill, Goes wandering at its own will, And yet does ever flow aright. — James Russell Lowell

Reading Chaucer is like brushing through the dewy grass at sunrise. — James Russell Lowell

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

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. — James Russell Lowell

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

It is only by instigation of the wrongs of men that what we call the rights of men become turbulent and dangerous. — James Russell Lowell

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

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

One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning. — James Russell Lowell

The discontent with the existing order of things pervaded the atmosphere, wherever the conditions were favorable, long before Columbus, seeking the back door of Asia, found himself knocking at the front door of America. — James Russell Lowell

All share in the government of the world was denied for centuries to perhaps the ablest, certainly the most tenacious race that had ever lived in it — James Russell Lowell

Life may be given in many ways, and loyalty to truth be sealed as bravely in the closet as the field. — James Russell Lowell

Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is. — James Russell Lowell

A wise man travels to discover himself. — James Russell Lowell

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

Whoever can endure unmixed delight, whoever can tolerate music and painting and poetry all in one, whoever wishes to be rid of thought and to let the busy anvils of the brain be silent for a time, let him read in the "Faery Queen." — James Russell Lowell

Time makes ancient good uncouth. — James Russell Lowell

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. — James Russell Lowell

Wut 's words to them whose faith an' truth On war's red techstone rang true metal; Who ventered life an' love an' youth For the gret prize o' death in battle? — James Russell Lowell

They are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak; They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think; They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three. — James Russell Lowell

The quiet tenderness of Chaucer, where you almost seem to hear the hot tears falling, and the simple choking words sobbed out. — James Russell Lowell

Among the lessons taught by the French revolution, there is none sadder or more striking than this
that you may make everything else out of the passions of men except a political system that will work, and that there is nothing so pitilessly and unconsciously cruel as sincerity formulated into dogma. — James Russell Lowell

The green grass floweth like a stream
Into the oceans's blue. — James Russell Lowell

Pride of origin, whether high or low, springs from the same principle in human nature; one is but the positive, the other the negative, pole of a single weakness. — James Russell Lowell

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?" — James Russell Lowell

Endurance is the crowning quality, And patience all the passion of great hearts. — James Russell Lowell

Granting our wish is one of Fate's saddest jokes. — James Russell Lowell

Sorrow is the great idealizer. — James Russell Lowell

All God's angels come to us disguised. — James Russell Lowell

O chime of sweet Saint Charity, Peal soon that Easter morn When Christ for all shall risen be, And in all hearts new-born! That Pentecost when utterance clear To all men shall be given, When all shall say My Brother here, And hear My Son in heaven! — James Russell Lowell

History is clarified experience. — James Russell Lowell

Where Church and State are habitually associated, it is natural that minds, even of a high order, should unconsciously come to regard religion as only a subtler mode of police. — James Russell Lowell

God'll send the bill to you. — James Russell Lowell

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

No mud can soil us but the mud we throw. — James Russell Lowell

Piety is indifferent whether she enters at the eye or at the ear. There is none of the senses at which she does not knock one day or other. The Puritans forgot this, and thrust Beauty out of the meeting-house and slammed the door in her face. — James Russell Lowell

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. — James Russell Lowell

The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change. — James Russell Lowell

Two meanings have our lightest fantasies,- One of the flesh, and of the spirit one. — James Russell Lowell

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

To educate the intelligence is to expand the horizon of its wants and desires. — James Russell Lowell

All thoughts that mold the age begin deep down within the primitive soul. — James Russell Lowell

In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim. — James Russell Lowell

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

Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime. — James Russell Lowell

Keats longed for fame, but longed above all to deserve it. — James Russell Lowell

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

In the earliest ages science was poetry, as in the latter poetry has become science. — James Russell Lowell

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

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. — James Russell Lowell

A nature wise With finding in itself the types of all, With watching from the dim verge of the time What things to be are visible in the gleams Thrown forward on them from the luminous past, Wise with the history of its own frail heart, With reverence and sorrow, and with love, Broad as the world, for freedom and for man. — James Russell Lowell

In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking. — James Russell Lowell

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

The victory's in believing. — James Russell Lowell

Over our manhood bend the skies; Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies; With our faint hearts the mountain strives, Its arms outstretched, the druid wood Waits with its benedicite And to our age's drowsy blood Still shouts the inspiring sea. — James Russell Lowell

Fools, when their roof-tree falls, think it doomsday. — James Russell Lowell

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. — James Russell Lowell

Folks never understand the folks they hate. — James Russell Lowell

Stern men with empires in their brains. — James Russell Lowell

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