James Russell Lowell Quotes

God'll send the bill to you.

When I was a beggarly boy, And lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend nor a toy, But I had Aladdin's lamp.

Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.

Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, We are happy now because God so wills it; No matter how barren the past may have been, 'T is enough for us now that the leaves are green; We sit in the warm shade and feel right well How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell... The breeze comes whispering in our ear, That dandelions are blossoming near... Every thing is upward striving; 'T is as easy now for the heart to be true As for grass to be green or skies to be blue, - 'T is the natural way of living.

Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, himself, his hungering neighbor and me.

Beauty hath no true glass, except it be in the sweet privacy of loving eyes.

The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change... [Truth's] mirror is turned forward, to reflect The promise of the future, not the past.

He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.

Fate loves the fearless.

His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, But hern went pity-Zekle.

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.

Over all life broods Poesy, like the calm blue sky with its motherly, rebuking face. She is the great reformer, and where the love of her is strong and healthy, wickedness and wrong cannot long prevail.

Evil is a far more cunning and persevering propagandist than good, for it has no inward strength, and is driven to seek countenance and sympathy.

It may be glorious to write Thoughts that shall glad the two or three High souls, like those far stars that come in sight Once in a century.

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

The gift without the giver is rare.

The opening of the first grammar school was the opening of the first trench against monopoly in Church and State.

Earth's biggest country 's gut her soul, An' risen up earth's greatest nation.

They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin.

Many make the household but only one the home.

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

Whom the heart of man shuts out, Sometimes the heart of God takes in, And fences them all round about With silence mid the worlds loud din.

The greatest homage we can pay to truth, is to use it.

The victory's in believing.

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.

Time makes ancient good uncouth.

Be He nowhere else, God is in all that liberates and lifts, in all that humbles, sweetens, and consoles.

If God made poets for anything, it was to keep alive the traditions of the pure, the holy, and the beautiful.

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.

They are slaves who fear to speak, for the fallen and the weak.

In vain we call old notions fudge, And bend our conscience to our dealing; The Ten Commandments will not budge, And stealing will continue stealing.

No sincere desire of doing good need make an enemy of a single human being; that philanthropy has surely a flaw in it which cannot sympathize with the oppressor equally as with the oppressed.

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.

He who keeps his faith only, cannot be discrowned.

Moral supremacy is the only one that leaves monuments, and not ruins, behind it.

New occasions teach new duties.

Endurance is the crowning quality, And patience all the passion of great hearts.

The brain can be easy to buy, but the heart never comes to market.

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.

Truth only needs to be for once spoken out; and there's such music in her, such strange rhythm, as makes men's memories her joyous slaves.

That best academy, a mother's knee.

For men in earnest have no time to waste In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth.

As one lamp lights another, nor grows less,So nobleness enkindleth nobleness.

A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.

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.

In the parliament of the present every man represents a constituency of the past.

And the poorest twig on the elm-tree was ridged inch deep with pearl.

The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.