James Russell Lowell Quotes

There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds.

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

And blessed are the horny hands of toil.

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.

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.

Pride and weakness are Siamese twins.

He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, and not progress, the highest lesson in statecraft.

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.

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.

Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past.

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.

My soul is not a palace of the past.

To win the secret of a weed's plain heart.

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

Against the windows the storm comes dashing, Through tattered foliage the hail tears crashing, The blue lightning flashes, The rapid hail clashes... The thunder is rumbling And crashing and crumbling.

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.

That pernicious sentiment, "Our country, right or wrong."

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

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

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

There is no self-delusion more fatal than that which makes the conscience dreamy with the anodyne of lofty sentiments, while the life is groveling and sensual

Most men make the voyage of life as if they carried sealed orders which they were not to open till they were fairly in mid-ocean.

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.

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.

Again, now, now, again Plashes the rain in heavy gouts, The crinkled lightning Seems ever brightening... And loud and long Again the thunder shouts His battle-song, - One quivering flash, One wildering crash, Followed by silence dead and dull, As if the cloud, let go, Leapt bodily below To whelm the earth in one mad overthrow, And then a total lull.

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

Death is delightful. Death is dawn, The waking from a weary night Of fevers unto truth and light.

It is curious for one who studies the action and reaction of national literature on each other, to see the humor of Swift and Sterne and Fielding, after filtering through Richter, reappear in Carlyle with a tinge of Germanism that makes it novel, alien, or even displeasing, as the case may be, to the English mind.

Borrowed garments never keep one warm.

I don't believe in princerple, But oh I du in interest.

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.

The dandelions and buttercups gild all the lawn: the drowsy bee stumbles among the clover tops, and summer sweetens all to me.

Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Endurance is the crowning quality.

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

AND what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays; Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten.

No mud can soil us but the mud we throw.

Tyrants are but the spawn of Ignorance, Begotten by the slaves they trample on.

There is something magnificent in having a country to love.

There is no work of genius which has not been the delight of mankind, no word of genius to which the human heart and soul have not sooner or later responded.

A man is old when he can pass an apple orchard and not remember the stomachache.

There is surely room for yet another schoolmaster when a score of seers advertise themselves in Boston newspapers.

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.

For only by unlearning Wisdom comes.

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

A word once vulgarized can never be rehabilitated.

O reputation! dearer far than life.