In creating, the only hard thing is to begin: a grass blade's no easier to make than an oak.
James Russell LowellNature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.
James Russell LowellAttention is the stuff that memory is made of, and memory is accumulated genius.
James Russell LowellIt 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.
James Russell Lowell