Lowell Quotes & Sayings

The plateau? she silently demanded of Ty. Why did you turn her loose? She could lead — Elizabeth Lowell

Large charity doth never soil, but only whitens soft white hands. — James Russell Lowell

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

My heart is tuned to sorrow, and the strings Vibrate most readily to minor chords, Searching and sad; my mind is stuffed with words Which voice the passion and the ache of things: Illusions beating with their baffled wings Against the walls of circumstance. — Amy Lowell

The true historical genius, to our thinking, is that which can see the nobler meaning of events that are near him, as the true poet is he who detects the divine in the casual; and we somewhat suspect the depth of his insight into the past who cannot recognize the godlike of to-day under that disguise in which it always visits us. — James Russell Lowell

I really love diving in, head first, with directing and not having to worry about hair, makeup or lines. — Chris Lowell

It seems to me that the bane of our country is a profession of faith either with no basis of real belief, or with no proper examination of the grounds on which the creed is supposed to rest. — James Russell Lowell

I shall go
Up and down
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed. — Amy Lowell

Tyrants are but the spawn of Ignorance, Begotten by the slaves they trample on. — James Russell Lowell

Fashion being the art of those who must purchase notice at some cheaper rate than that of being beautiful, loves to do rash and extravagant things. She must be forever new, or she becomes insipid. — 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

When I go away from you
The world beats dead
Like a slackened drum. — Amy Lowell

Nothing, I learned, brings you into the present quite like holding hands. The past seemed irrelevant; the future, unnecessary. — Catherine Lowell

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

Not a change for the better in our human housekeeping has ever taken place that wise and good men have not opposed it-have not prophesied that the world would wake up to find its throat cut in consequence. — James Russell Lowell

Everything mortal has moments immortal — Amy Lowell

Of course there's a lot of knowledge in universities: the freshmen bring a little in; the seniors don't take much away, so knowledge sort of accumulates. — Abbott Lawrence Lowell

She pushed herself up, swayed, and might have tumbled if Feeney hadn't gripped her arm. "Head rush. I'm okay, just a little queasy. Lowell's in there, secured. You need to haul his ass in. Your collar."
"No, it's not." Feeney gave her arm a squeeze. "But I'll haul his ass in for you. McNab, help the lieutenant upstairs, then get your butt back down here and start on the electronics."
"I don't need help," Eve protested.
"You fall on your face," Feeney murmured in her ear, "you'll ruin your exit."
"Yeah. Yeah."
"Just lean on me, Lieutenant." McNab wrapped an arm around her waist.
"You try to cop a feel, I can still put you down."
"Whatever your condition, Dallas, you still scare me."
"Aw." Touched, she slung an arm around his shoulders. "That's so sweet. — J.D. Robb

There has always been tension between reporters and the administration, particularly when it comes to war in the modern era. You can go to Kennedy or Johnson and see that they weren't happy with David Halberstam or Morley Safer. — Lowell Bergman

Have you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to read means? That it is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination? to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moment? That it enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time? More than that, it annihilates time and space for us. — James Russell Lowell

Do flies trapped in amber scream? — Elizabeth 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

When trying to explain anything, I usually find that the Bible, that great collection of magnificent and varied poetry, has said it before in the best possible way. — Amy Lowell

Those who love are but one step from heaven. — James Russell Lowell

Take everything easy and quit dreaming and brooding and you will be well guarded from a thousand evils. — Amy Lowell

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. — James Russell Lowell

I remember all the kids picking their chosen career paths and I was thinking, If I'm an actor I can be an astronaut and a policeman and a firefighter. At the time I was so young that I actually thought actors were all of those things. — Chris Lowell

A few miles away across the East River was the apartment he could never get used to, the job where he had nothing to do, the dozen or so people he knew slightly and cared about not at all: a fabric of existence as blank and seamless as the freshly plaster wall he passed. Soon his wife would return from New Jersey. Soon everyone would be back, and things would go on much as they had before. From the street outside came the sound of laughter and shouting, bottles breaking, voices droning in the warm air, and children playing far past their bedtime. It all meant nothing whatever to Lowell. Standing in the parlor of a house no longer his, listening to the voices of people whose lives were closed to him forever, contemplating a future much like his past, he realized that it was finally too late for him. Everything had gone wrong, and he had succeeded at nothing, and he was never going to have any kind of life at all. — L.J. Davis

It may be conjectured that it is cheaper in the long run to lift men up than to hold them down, and that the ballot in their hands is less dangerous to society than a sense of wrong is in their heads. — James Russell Lowell

The eye is the notebook of the poet. — James Russell Lowell

Lindsey: Why would you choose me?
Rafe: Because you're the one I want. — Rachel Hawthorne

I only read on my phone and the whole "let's see if we can get people to do it" idea seems less "wouldn't it be cool if we could get people to do it" and more "what else would people do." — Nathan Lowell

Though old the thought and oft exprest, Tis his at last who says it best. — James Russell Lowell

I myself am hell;
nobody's here — Robert Lowell

You are ice and fire
The touch of you burns my hands like snow — Amy Lowell

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. — James Russell Lowell

I'm seeing so much of America today, Luya kept telling Lowell in nervously accented English. It became a personal catchphrase for him - whenever things were not to his liking, he'd say that - I'm seeing so much of America today. — Karen Joy Fowler

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

Stop? I'm the guy. I don't stop! That's the woman's job. We're the gas, they're the brakes. — Lowell Ganz

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

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

The rich man's sons inherits cares; The bank may break, the factory burn, A breath may burst his bubble shares, And soft, white hands could hardly earn A living that would serve his turn. — James Russell Lowell

He was a nice guy. That was the sort of thing you said about somebody you had nothing against and nothing in common with; you called him a nice guy. That was what Lowell was, even to himself — L.J. Davis

Universities are full of knowledge; the freshmen bring a little in and the seniors take none away, and knowledge accumulates. — A. Lawrence Lowell

This goin' ware glory waits ye haint one agreeable feetur. — James Russell Lowell

Usually, meaning tends to find you, in the middle of the night, and when you least expect it. — Catherine Lowell

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

Taste is the next gift to genius. — James Russell Lowell

The Taxi
When I go away from you
The world beats dead
Like a slackened drum.
I call out for you against the jutted stars
And shout into the ridges of the wind.
Streets coming fast,
One after the other,
Wedge you away from me,
And the lamps of the city prick my eyes
So that I can no longer see your face.
Why should I leave you,
To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night? — Amy Lowell

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. — James Russell Lowell

Believe that when I am at once a man's friend I am always so-nor is it so very hard to bring me to it. And though a man may enjoy himself in being my enemy, he cannot make me HIS for longer than I wish. Good afternoon." Lowell had a way of leaving a conversation with the other person needing more from him. — Matthew Pearl

Monkeys"
"You can buy cooler, more humdrum pets
a monkey deprived of his mother in the cradle
feels the want of her affection so keenly
he either pines away or masters you
by literally hanging on your neck
no ounce of your patience or courage is misplaced;
the worst is his air of boredom and neglect,
manifested in tail-chewing and fur plucking.
The whole species is vulnerable to killing colds,
likes straw, hay or bits of a torn blanket,
a floortray thinly covered with sawdust,
they need trapezes, shelves, old rubber tires
any string or beam will do to set them swinging
these charming youngsters tend to sour with age — Robert Lowell

It was an endless, consuming nightmare that she escaped only in madness.
And then the escape was not complete. Part of her knew, always. — Elizabeth Lowell

Poets are always the advance guard of literature; the advance guard of life. It is for this reason that their recognition comes so slowly. — Amy 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 inkstand is full of ink, and the paper lies white and unspotted, in the round of light thrown by a candle. Puffs of darkness sweep into the corners, and keep rolling through the room behind his chair. The air is silver and pearl, for the night is liquid with moonlight.
See how the roof glitters, like ice!
Over there, a slice of yellow cuts into the silver-blue, and beside it stand two geraniums, purple because the light is silver-blue, to-night. — Amy Lowell

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

Are there any leading men in your life?"

"Several, but they're all fictional. — Catherine Lowell

This
is the departure strip,
the dream-road. Whoever built it
left numbers, words and arrows.
He had to leave in a hurry. — Robert Lowell

I want to apologize for plaguing you with so many telephone calls last November and December. When the 'enthusiasm' is coming on me it is accompanied by a feverish reaching out to my friends. After its over I wince and wither. — Robert Lowell

In 'The Big Chill,' those characters are in middle age, thinking, 'Oh, God, I've turned into my parents. I've failed.' And in 'Beside Still Waters,' we're showing the struggles of people who actually want to be like their parents and feel they can't live up to their heights. — Chris Lowell

Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her. — Amy Lowell

Isn't there some truth in all fiction?" "There's some fiction in all truth too. — Catherine Lowell

New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth. — James Russell Lowell

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. — James Russell Lowell

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

He's true to God who's true to man. — James Russell Lowell

Painter"
"I said you are only keeping me here
in the hospital, lying to my parents
and saying I am madder than I am,
because you only want to keep me here,
squeezing my last dollar to the pennies
I'm saner than anyone in the hospital.
I had to say what every madman says
a black phrase, the sleep of reason mothers monsters ...
When I am painting the canvas is a person;
all I do, each blot and line's alive,
when I am finished, it is shit on the canvas ...
But in his sketches more finished than his oils,
sketches made after he did those masterpieces,
constable can make us see the breeze ... — Robert Lowell

On Lincoln: A profound common sense is the best genius for statesmanship. — James Russell Lowell

Salem"

In salem seasick spindrift drifts or skips
to the canvas flapping on the seaward panes
until the knitting sailor stabs at ships
nosing like sheep of Morpheus through his brain's
asylum. Seaman, seaman, how the draft
lashes the oily slick about your head,
beating up whitecaps! Seaman, Charon's raft
dumps its damned goods into the harbor-bed,--
There sewage sickens the rebellious seas.
Remember, seaman, Salem fisherman
Once hung their nimble fleets on the Great Banks.
Where was it that New England bred the men
who quartered the Leviathan's fat flanks
and fought the British Lion to his knees? — Robert Lowell

Your aim will be knowledge and wisdom, not the reflected glamour of fame. — Abbott L. Lowell

It's a mistake to lie to a librarian, you know. Some people assume we're shy and gullible, but we know how to dig up the dirt. — Virginia Lowell

Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past. — James Russell Lowell

The New Hampshire girls who came to Lowell were descendants of the sturdy backwoodsmen who settled that State scarcely a hundred years before ... They were earnest and capable; ready to undertake anything that was worth doing. My dreamy, indolent nature was shamed into activity among them. They gave me a larger, firmer ideal of womanhood. — Lucy Larcom

Bare is back," says the Norse proverb, "without brother behind it;" and this is, by analogy, true of an elective magistracy. The hereditary ruler in any critical emergency may reckon on the inexhaustible resources of prestige, of sentiment, of superstition, of dependent interest, while the new man must slowly and painfully create all these out of the unwilling material around him, by superiority of character, by patient singleness of purpose, by sagacious presentiment of popular tendencies and instinctive sympathy with the national character. Mr. Lincoln's task was one of peculiar and exceptional difficulty. — James Russell Lowell

A good cry is like a good rain ... Afterwards everything is washed clean, and for awhile, you can see for miles. — Jax Peters Lowell

What a man pays for bread and butter is worth its market value, and no more. What he pays for love's sake is gold indeed, which has a lure for angels' eyes, and rings well upon God's touchstone. — James Russell Lowell

Beyond Stone Ring Keep's high walls, the wind wailed of coming winter. Ariane didn't hear the mournful cry. She heard nothing but echoes — Elizabeth Lowell

The whole object of science is to synthesize, and so simplify; and did we but know the uttermost of a subject we could make it singularly clear. — Percival Lowell

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

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

This child is not mine as the first was; I cannot sing it to rest; I cannot lift it up fatherly, And bless it upon my breast. Yet it lies in my little one's cradle, And sits in my little one's chair, And the light of the heaven she 's gone to Transfigures its golden hair. — James Russell Lowell

When he's like this, Miss Lowell," Mark offered from his seat on the sofa, "I usually take it upon myself to stamp out in a rage."

"Must I stamp? Or can I sweet out gracefully?" "By all means, sweep. — Courtney Milan

The sacred rowan is a woman born long, long ago, a woman whose refusal to see love cost first her lover's life, then the lives of her family, her clan, her people.
But not her own life. Not quite.
In pity and punishment she was turned into an undying tree, a rowan that weeps only in the presence of transcendent love; and the tears of the rowan are blossoms that confer extraordinary grace upon those who can see them.
When enough tears are wept, the rowan will be free. She waits inside a sacred ring that can be neither weighed or measured nor touched. She waits for love that is worth her tears.
The rowan is waiting still. — Elizabeth 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

Once a book has left the brain of the author, it took on a life of its own, and served as the only liaison between the reader and the author. If you read carefully, the book could tell you all sorts of secrets-sometimes about its characters, and sometimes about its creator. — Catherine Lowell

If astronomy teaches anything, it teaches that man is but a detail in the evolution of the universe, and the resemblant though diverse details are inevitably to be expected in the hosts of orbs around him. He learns that, though he will probably never find his double anywhere, he is destined to discover any number of cousins scattered through space. — Percival Lowell

Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it; We are happy now because God wills it. — James Russell Lowell

How long can a man live on the outside before he loses his ability to love? How long before there's no more hope? — Elizabeth Lowell

The secret of force in writing lies not so much in the pedigree of nouns and adjectives and verbs, as in having something that you believe in to say, and making the parts of speech vividly conscious of it. — James Russell Lowell

Ah, in this world, where every guiding thread Ends suddenly in the one sure centre, death, The visionary hand of Might-have-been Alone can fill Desire's cup to the brim! — James Russell Lowell

Would you like me to write Mrs. Ames about inviting you to Yaddo? Get Miss Moore to write too. You can't invite yourself, though, of course, almost all the invitations are planned. It would be marvelous to have you there. I know the solitude that gets too much. It doesn't drug me, but I get fantastic and uncivilized.
At last my divorce [from Jean Stafford] is over. It's funny at my age to have one's life so much in and on one's hands. All the rawness of learning, what I used to think should be done with by twenty-five. Sometimes nothing is so solid to me as writing - I suppose that's what vocation means - at times a torment, a bad conscience, but all in all, purpose and direction, so I'm thankful, and call it good, as Eliot would say. — Robert Lowell

Whenever you have the kind of market that is taking shape now - a wildly volatile one with big pricing discrepancies - it plays right into the hands of managers who are very focused on research and stock picking. — James Russell Lowell

Sexual love is the most stupendous fact of the universe, and the most magical mystery our poor blind senses know. — Amy Lowell

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

Poetry, far more than fiction, reveals the soul of humanity. — Amy Lowell

Men had made, we believe, fundamental changes in the doctrines, purposes, and practices of the Pristine Gospel and Church. There had been an apostasy, or a falling away from the true character of Christ's teachings in the centuries which followed the Apostolic age. — Lowell L. Bennion

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