James Russell Lowell

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

— James Russell Lowell

As 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 Lowell

Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime . Not failure, but low aim is crime.

— James Russell Lowell

They talk about their Pilgrim blood, their birthright high and holy! a mountain-stream that ends in mud thinks is melancholy.

— James Russell Lowell

The misfortunes hardest to bear are these which never came.

— James Russell Lowell

There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.

— James Russell Lowell

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.

— James Russell Lowell

What a sense of security in an old book which time has criticized for us.

— James Russell Lowell

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

— James Russell Lowell

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.

— James Russell Lowell

The question of common sense is what is it good for? A question which would abolish the rose and be answered triumphantly by the cabbage.

— James Russell Lowell

Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise ;in statesmanship.

— James Russell Lowell

Not failure, but low aim, is crime.

— James Russell Lowell

A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.

— James Russell Lowell

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

— James Russell Lowell

Life is the jailer, death the angel sent to draw the unwilling bolts and set us free.

— James Russell Lowell

But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet. Lessen like sound of friends departing feet; And death is beautiful as feet of friend. Coming with welcome at our journey's end.

— James Russell Lowell

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide; In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side.

— James Russell Lowell

Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.

— James Russell Lowell

Democracy give every man the right to be his own oppressor.

— James Russell Lowell

To educate the intelligence is to expand the horizon of its wants and desires.

— James Russell Lowell

Where one person shapes their life by precept and example, there are a thousand who have shaped it by impulse and circumstances.

— James Russell Lowell

One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.

— James Russell Lowell

The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers is that which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience.

— James Russell Lowell

Fortune is the rod of the weak, and the staff of the brave.

— James Russell Lowell

Freedom is the only law which genius knows.

— James Russell Lowell

It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.

— James Russell Lowell

Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do that day, which must be done, whether you like it or not.

— James Russell Lowell

Sorrow is the great idealizer.

— James Russell Lowell

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

— James Russell Lowell

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.

— James Russell Lowell

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

— James Russell Lowell

The idol is the measure of the worshipper.

— James Russell Lowell

Incredulity robs us of many pleasures, and gives us nothing in return.

— James Russell Lowell

It is the rooted instinct in men to admire what is better and more beautiful than themselves.

— James Russell Lowell

It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dangerous, but the revolts of the intelligence.

— James Russell Lowell

I don't believe in principle, but I do in interest.

— James Russell Lowell

The mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts, and dwell a hermit anywhere.

— James Russell Lowell

True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgment.

— James Russell Lowell

He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.

— James Russell Lowell

Light is the symbol of truth.

— James Russell Lowell

Good luck is the willing handmaid of a upright and energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.

— James Russell Lowell

I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.

— James Russell Lowell

It is mediocrity which makes laws and sets mantraps and spring-guns in the realm of free song, saying thus far shalt thou go and no further.

— James Russell Lowell

Let us be of good cheer, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never happen.

— James Russell Lowell

In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.

— James Russell Lowell

The foolish and the dead never change their opinions.

— James Russell Lowell

Endurance is the crowning quality...

— James Russell Lowell

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

— James Russell Lowell

The surest plan to make a man is, think him so.

— James Russell Lowell

What men prize most is a privilege, even if it be that of chief mourner at a funeral.

— James Russell Lowell

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

— James Russell Lowell

There is no self-delusion more fatal than that which makes the conscience dreamy with the anodyne of lofty sentiments, while the life is groveling and sensual.

— James Russell Lowell

A reading machine, always wound up and going, he mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.

— James Russell Lowell

There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.

— James Russell Lowell

Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint.

— James Russell Lowell

Sentiment is intellectualized emotion; emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals by the fancy.

— James Russell Lowell

Sincerity is impossible, unless it pervade the whole being, and the pretence of it saps the very foundation of character.

— James Russell Lowell

Solitude is as needed to the imagination as society is wholesome to the character.

— James Russell Lowell

Those who know the truth are not equal to those who love it Confucius All truth is safe and nothing else is safe, but he who keeps back truth, or withholds it from men, from motives of expediency, is either a coward or a criminal.

— James Russell Lowell

Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.

— James Russell Lowell

Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed.

— James Russell Lowell

Folks never understand the folks they hate.

— James Russell Lowell

There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.

— James Russell Lowell

Blessed are they who have nothing to say and who cannot be persuaded to say it.

— James Russell Lowell

Every person born into this world their work is born with them.

— James Russell Lowell

If youth be a defect, it is one that we outgrow only too soon.

— James Russell Lowell

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

— James Russell Lowell

Be NOBLE! and the nobleness that liesIn other men, sleeping, but never dead,Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.

— James Russell Lowell

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 Lowell

Careless seems the great Avenger; historys pages but recordOne death-grapple in the darkness twixt old systems and the Word;Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own. New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth;Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,Nor attempt the Futures portal with the Pasts blood-rusted key.

— James Russell Lowell

Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us;The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in,The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us,We bargain for the graves we lie in;At the Devils booth are all things sold,Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold;For a cap and bells our lives we pay,Bubbles we buy with a whole souls tasking:T is heaven alone that is given away,T is only God may be had for the asking;No price is set on the lavish summer;June may be had by the poorest comer. And what is so rare as a day in June?Then, if ever, come perfect days;Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,And over it softly her warm ear lays:Whether we look, or whether we listen,We hear life murmur, or see it glisten.

— James Russell Lowell

Maiden, when such a soul as thine is born, The morning-stars their ancient music make.

— James Russell Lowell

More than when first I singled thee, This only prayer is mine,--That, in the years I yet shall see, As, darling, in the past, thou'lt be My happy Valentine.

— James Russell Lowell

Ah, but I know, for never April's shine, Nor passion gust of rain, nor all her flowers Scattered in haste, were seen so sudden fine As she in various mood, on whom the powers Of happiest stars in fair conjunction smiled To bless the birth of April's darling child.

— James Russell Lowell

True Love is but a humble, lowborn thing, And hath its food served up in earthen ware; It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand, Through the every-dayness of this work-day world.

— James Russell Lowell

To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes back Her wisest Scholars, those who understood The deeper teaching of her mystic tome, And offered their fresh lives to make it good.

— James Russell Lowell

Remember that a man is valuable in our day for what he knows and that his company will always be desired by others in exact proportion to the amount of intelligence and instruction he brings with him.

— James Russell Lowell

When life, once past its fortieth year, Wheels up its evening hemisphere, The mind's own shadow, which the boy Saw onward point to hope and joy, Shifts round, irrevocably set Tow'rd morning's loss and vain regret, And, argue with it as we will, The clock is unconverted still.

— James Russell Lowell

And blessed are the horny hands of toil.

— James Russell Lowell