This imputation of inconsistency is one to which every sound politician and every honest thinker must sooner or later subject himself. The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion.
James Russell LowellLife is the jailer, death the angel sent to draw the unwilling bolts and set us free.
James Russell LowellMen's thoughts and opinions are in a great degree vassals of him who invents a new phrase or re-applies an old epithet. The thought or feeling a thousand times repeated becomes his at last who utters it best.
James Russell LowellAll the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
James Russell LowellNow the heart is so full that a drop overfills it; We are happy now because God wills it.
James Russell LowellGod is the only being who has time enough; but a prudent man, who knows how to seize occasion, can commonly make a shift to find as much as he needs.
James Russell LowellNo man, I suspect, ever lived long in the country without being bitten by these meteorological ambitions. He likes to be hotter and colder, to have been more deeply snowed up, to have more trees and larger blown down than his neighbors.
James Russell LowellOver our manhood bend the skies; Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies; With our faint hearts the mountain strives, Its arms outstretched, the druid wood Waits with its benedicite And to our ageยs drowsy blood Still shouts the inspiring sea.
James Russell LowellLaborin' man an' laborin' woman Hev one glory an' one shame; Ev'y thin' thet' s done inhuman Injers all on 'em the same.
James Russell LowellThe mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts, and dwell a hermit anywhere.
James Russell LowellTake winter as you find him, and he turns out to be a thoroughly honest fellow; with no nonsense in him, which is a great comfort in the long-run.
James Russell LowellNature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.
James Russell LowellAs life runs on, the road grows strange with faces new - and near the end. The milestones into headstones change, Neath every one a friend.
James Russell LowellThe 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[B]ut in literature, it should be remembered, a thing always becomes his at last who says it best, and thus makes it his own.
James Russell LowellConsole yourself, dear man and brother; whatever you may be sure of, be sure at least of this, that you are dreadfully like other people. Human nature has a much greater genius for sameness than for originality.
James Russell LowellNo man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself, who would not exchange the finest show for the poorest reality, who does not so love his work that he is not only glad to give himself for it, but finds rather a gain than a sacrifice in the surrender.
James Russell LowellMaking one object, in outward or inward nature, more holy to a single heart is reward enough for a life; for the more sympathies we gain or awaken for what is beautiful, by so much deeper will be our sympathy for that which is most beautiful,--the human soul!
James Russell LowellAh, men do not know how much strength is in poise, That he goes the farthest who goes far enough.
James Russell LowellThe ultimate result of protecting fools from their folly is to fill the planet full of fools.
James Russell LowellIf I were asked what book is better than a cheap book, I should answer that there is one book better than a cheap book, - and that is a book honestly come by.
James Russell LowellNo man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself.
James Russell LowellScepticism commonly takes up the room left by defect of imagination, and is the very quality of mind most likely to seek for sensual proof of supersensual things. If one came from the dead it could not believe; and yet it longs for such a witness, and will put up with a very dubious one.
James Russell LowellHush! Still as death, The tempest holds his breath As from a sudden will; The rain stops short, but from the eaves You see it drop, and hear it from the leaves, All is so bodingly still.
James Russell LowellThe intellect has only one failing, which, to be sure, is a very considerable one. It has no conscience.
James Russell LowellIf the devil take a less hateful shape to us than to our fathers, he is as busy with us as with them.
James Russell LowellGreatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime. Not failure, but low aim is crime.
James Russell LowellFastidiousness is only another word for egotism; and all men who know not where to look for truth save in the narrow well of self will find their own image at the bottom, and mistake it for what they are seeking.
James Russell LowellWho is it needs such flawless shafts as fate? What archer of his arrows is so choice, or hits the white so surely?
James Russell LowellWhat men prize most is a privilege, even if it be that of chief mourner at a funeral.
James Russell LowellNot only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not.
James Russell LowellI willingly confess to so great a partiality for trees as tempts me to respect a man in exact proportion to his respect for them.
James Russell LowellThe discontent with the existing order of things pervaded the atmosphere, wherever the conditions were favorable, long before Columbus, seeking the back door of Asia, found himself knocking at the front door of America.
James Russell Lowell