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 LowellSentiment is intellectualized emotion; emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals by the fancy.
James Russell LowellIt is the vain endeavor to make ourselves what we are not that has strewn history with so many broken purposes and lives left in the rough.
James Russell LowellLove lives on, and hath a power to bless when they who loved are hidden in the grave.
James Russell LowellA friendship counting nearly forty years is the finest kind of shade-tree I know.
James Russell LowellTo me it seems not unreasonable to find a re-enforcement of optimism, a renewal of courage and hope, in the modern theory that man has mounted to what he is from the lowest step of potentiality, through toilsome grades of ever-expanding existence, even thought it have been by a spiral stairway, mainly dark or dusty, with loop-holes at long intervals only, and these granting but a narrow and one-sided view.
James Russell Lowell