Lowell James Russell Quotes & Sayings

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

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

Fanaticism, or, to call it by its milder name, enthusiasm, is only powerful and active so long as it is aggressive. Establish it firmly in power, and it becomes conservatism, whether it will or no. — James Russell 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

The first lesson of life is to burn our own smoke; that is, not to inflict on outsiders our personal sorrows and petty morbidness, not to keep thinking of ourselves as exceptional cases. — James Russell Lowell

Enthusiasm begets enthusiasm, eloquence produces conviction for the moment; but it is only by truth to Nature and the everlasting institutions of mankind that those abiding influences are won that enlarge from generation to generation. — James Russell 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

Every person born into this world their work is born with them. — James Russell Lowell

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

I tell ye wut, my judgment is you're pooty sure to fail, Ez long 'z the head keeps turnin' back for counsel to the the tail. — James Russell Lowell

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

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. — 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

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

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. — 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

For there's nothing we read of in torture's inventions, Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of intentions. — James Russell Lowell

The only conclusive evidence of a man's sincerity is that he gives himself for a principle. Words, money, all things else, are comparatively easy to give away; but when a man makes a gift of his daily life and practice, it is plain that the truth, whatever it may be, has taken possession of him. — James Russell Lowell

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

Practical application is the only mordant which will set things in the memory. Study without it is gymnastics, and not work, which alone will get intellectual bread. — James Russell Lowell

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. — 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

James Russell Lowell wrote: It's not what we give but what we share, For the gift without the giver is bare. Who gives of himself of his alms feeds three, Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me. — John Wooden

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

Attention is the stuff that memory is made of, and memory is accumulated genius. — 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

They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin. — James Russell Lowell

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

History is clarified experience. — 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

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. — James Russell Lowell

Analysis is carried into everything. Even Deity is subjected to chemical tests. — James Russell Lowell

The one thing finished in this hasty world. — James Russell Lowell

The material of thought re-acts upon the thought itself. — 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

In the storm, like a prophet o'ermaddened, Thou singest and tossest thy branches; Thy heart with the terror is gladdened, Thou forebodest the dread avalanches ... In the calm thou o'erstretchest the valleys With thine arms, as if blessings imploring, Like an old king led forth from his palace, When his people to battle are pouring ... — James Russell Lowell

O visionary world, condition strange, Where naught abiding is but only change. — James Russell Lowell

Sorrow is the great idealizer. — James Russell Lowell

How little inventiveness there is in man, Grave copier of copies. — James Russell Lowell

Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne. — 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

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

It is only the intellect that can be thoroughly and hideously wicked. It can forget everything in the attainment of its ends. The heart recoils; in its retired some drops of childhood's dew still linger, defying manhood's fiery noon. — James Russell Lowell

Fortune is the rod of the weak, and the staff of the brave. — James Russell Lowell

'Tis sorrow builds the shining ladder up, Whose golden rounds are our calamities, Whereon our firm feet planting, nearer God The spirit climbs, and hath its eyes unsealed. True it is that Death's face seems stern and cold When he is sent to summon those we love; But all God's angels come to us disguised; Sorrow and sickness, poverty and death, One after another, lift their frowning masks, And we behold the Seraph's face beneath, All radiant with the Glory and the calm Of having looked upon the front of God. — James Russell Lowell

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

The idol is the measure of the worshipper. — James Russell Lowell

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

Our American republic will endure only as long as the ideas of the men who founded it continue dominant. — James Russell Lowell

The ultimate result of protecting fools from their folly is to fill the planet full of fools. — James Russell Lowell

The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment. — James Russell Lowell

Now on the hills I hear the thunder mutter ... Nearer and nearer rolls the thunder-clap, - You can hear the quick heart of the tempest beat ... Look! look! that livid flash! And instantly follows the rattling thunder, As if some cloud-crag, split asunder, Fell, splintering with a ruinous crash, On the Earth, which crouches in silence under; And now a solid gray wall of rain Shuts off the landscape, mile by mile ... — James Russell Lowell

The snow had begun in the gloaming, and busily all the night had been heaping field and highway with a silence deep and white. — James Russell Lowell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Old events have modern meanings; only that survives of past history which finds kindred in all hearts and lives. — James Russell Lowell

God'll send the bill to you. — 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

The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude. — James Russell Lowell

There is something solid and doughty in the man that can rise from defeat, the stuff of which victories are made in due time, when we are able to choose our position better, and the sun is at our back. — 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

Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave. — James Russell Lowell

Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed
Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued,
And cries reproachful: Was it then my praise,
And not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth;
I claim of thee the promise of thy youth. — James Russell Lowell

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 riches of scholarship, the benignities of literature, defy fortune and outlive calamity. They are beyond the reach of thief or moth or rust. As they cannot be inherited, so they cannot, be alienated. — James Russell Lowell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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