James Russell Lowell Quotes
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The right of individual property is no doubt the very corner-stone of civilization, as hitherto understood; but I am a little impatient of being told that property is entitled to exceptional consideration because it bears all the burdens of the state. It bears those, indeed, which can be most easily borne, but poverty pays with its person the chief expenses of war, pestilence, and famine.
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Hush! 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.
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Take 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.
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Borrowed garments never keep one warm.
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The intellect has only one failing, which, to be sure, is a very considerable one. It has no conscience.
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We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage.
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It was in making education not only common to all, but in some sense compulsory on all, that the destiny of the free republics of America was practically settled.
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The very gnarliest and hardest of hearts has some musical strings in it; but they are tuned differently in every one of us.
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Pride of origin, whether high or low, springs from the same principle in human nature; one is but the positive, the other the negative, pole of a single weakness.
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Sentiment is intellectualized emotion; emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals by the fancy.
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So we're all right, an' I, for one, Don't think our cause'll lose in vally By rammin' Scriptur' in our gun, An' gittin' Natur' for an ally.
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All free governments, whatever their name, are in reality governments by public opinion ; and it is on the quality of this public opinion that their prosperity depends. It is, therefore, their first duty to purify the element from which they draw the breath of life.
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A man is old when he can pass an apple orchard and not remember the stomachache.
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The material of thought re-acts upon the thought itself.
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My soul is not a palace of the past.
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A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.
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Not 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.
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It seems to me that the bane of our country is a profession of faith either with no basis of real belief, or with no proper examination of the grounds on which the creed is supposed to rest.
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The devil loves nothing better than the intolerance of reformers.
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Many-sidedness of culture makes our vision clearer and keener in particulars.
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Endurance is the crowning quality.
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Certainly it is no shame to a man that he should be as nice about his country as his sweetheart, yet it would not be wise to hold everyone an enemy who could not see her with our own enchanted eyes.
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The nunneries of silent nooks, the murmured longing of the wood.
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Better to me the poor mans crust, Better the blessing of the poor, Though I turn me empty from his door; That is no true alms which the hand can hold; He gives nothing but worthless gold Who gives from a sense of duty; But he who gives a slender mite, And gives to that which is out of sight, That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty Which runs through all and doth all unite, - The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms, The heart outstretches its eager palms, For a god goes with it and makes it store To the soul that was starving in darkness before.
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Each day the world is born anew for him who takes it rightly.
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Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just; Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified.
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Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this, that you are dreadfully like other people.
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Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past.
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There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.
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The child is not mine as the first was, I cannot sing it to rest, I cannot lift it up fatherly And bliss it upon my breast; Yet it lies in my little one's cradle And sits in my little one's chair, And the light of the heaven she's gone to Transfigures its golden hair.
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