ThursdayFeb 05, 2026
Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969
James Russell Lowell (b. 22 February 1819, Cambridge, Massachusetts - d. 12 August 1891, Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an American Romantic poet, critic, satirist, diplomat, and abolitionist.
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side.
Life is the jailer, death the angel sent to draw the unwilling bolts and set us free.
In general those who have nothing to say Contrive to spend the longest time in doing it.
Wealth may be an ancient thing, for it means power, it means leisure, it means liberty.
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.
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.
Patience, when it is a divine thing, is active, not passive.
There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.
The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.
Get but the truth once uttered, and 'tis like A star new-born that drops into its place And which, once circling in its placid round, Not all the tumult of the earth can shake.
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.
We look at death through the cheap-glazed windows of the flesh, and believe him the monster which the flawed and cracked glass represents him.
Greatly begin! Though thou have time But for a line, be that sublime- Not failure, but low aim is crime.
The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers is that which is woven of conviction.
Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
Solitude is as needful to the imagination As society is wholesome for the character.
Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold.
Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is a temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.
What a sense of security in an old book which Time has criticised for us!
A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.
In all literary history there is no such figure as Dante, no such homogeneousness of life and works, such loyalty to ideas, such sublime irrecognition of the unessential.
Wut 's words to them whose faith an' truth On war's red techstone rang true metal; Who ventered life an' love an' youth For the gret prize o' death in battle?
... It was in masking 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.
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.
Endurance is the crowning quality, And patience all the passion of great hearts.
One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.
Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.
Two meanings have our lightest fantasies, One of the flesh, and of the spirit one.
Fortune is the rod of the weak, and the staff of the brave
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me.
Not what we give, but what we share, For the gift without the giver is bare; Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me.
This goin' ware glory waits ye haint one agreeable feetur.
I don't believe in princerple, But oh I du in interest.
A weed is no more than a flower in disguise.
Mishaps are like knives, that either serve as or cut us, as we grip them by the blade or by the handle.
Aspiration sees only one side of every question; possession many.
If 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.
Whoever can endure unmixed delight, whoever can tolerate music and painting and poetry all in one, whoever wishes to be rid of thought and to let the busy anvils of the brain be silent for a time, let him read in the 'Faery Queen.'
They are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak. ...... They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three.
They enslave their childrens children who make compromise with sin.
We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage.
Behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.
Great truths are portions of the soul of man; Great souls are portions of eternity.
Earth's biggest country 's gut her soul, An' risen up earth's greatest nation.
Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it; We are happy now because God wills it.
Our Pilgrim stock wuz pithed with hardihood.
The one thing finished in this hasty world.
Folks never understand the folks they hate.
I love her with a love as still As a broad river's peaceful might, Which by high tower and lowly mill, Goes wandering at its own will, And yet does ever flow aright.
Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how.
She doeth little kindnesses Which most leave undone, or despise.
Laborin' man an' laborin' woman Hev one glory an' one shame; Ev'y thin' thet' s done inhuman Injers all on 'em the same.
I tell ye wut, my judgment is youre pooty sure to fail, Ez long z the head keeps turnin back for counsel to the the tail.
Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving.
One day with life and heart Is more than time enough to find a world.
No man is born into the world whose work Is not born with him. There is always work, And tools to work withal, for those who will; And blessed are the horny hands of toil.
Before Man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.
Of my merit On thet pint you yourself may jedge; All is, I never drink no sperit, Nor I haint never signed no pledge.
Moliere Not a deed would he do, Not a word would he utter, Till he's weighed its relation To plain bread and butter.
No mud can soil us but the mud we throw.
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God's new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right; And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.
Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.
Nature fits all her children with something to do.
From lower to the higher next, Not to the top, is Nature's text; And embryo Good, to reach full stature, Absorbs the Evil in its nature.
Be noble, and the nobleness that lies in other men, sleeping but never dead, will rise in majesty to meet thine own.
Be noble! and the nobleness that lies In other men, sleeping but never dead, Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.
Blessed are they who have nothing to say and who cannot be persuaded to say it.
He gives us the very quintessence of perception,the clearly crystalized precipitation of all that is most precious in the ferment of impression after the impertinent and obtrusive particulars have evaporated from the memory.
Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past.
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.
These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred, Each softly lucent as a rounded moon; The diver Omar plucked them from their bed, Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread.
If God made poets for anything, it was to keep alive the traditions of the pure, the holy, and the beautiful.
A poet must needs be before his own age, to be even with posterity.
It is by presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of a man is tested.
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.
Ez to my princerples, I glory In hevin' nothin' o' the sort.
Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.
Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed.
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.
True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgment.
This child is not mine as the first was; I cannot sing it to rest; I cannot lift it up fatherly, And bless 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.
To win the secret of a weed's plain heart.
Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint.
Sentiment is intellectualized emotion,emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals by the fancy.
All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
The wisest man could ask no more of fate Than to be simple, modest, manly, true, Safe from the many, honored by the few; Nothing to court in Church, or World, or State, But inwardly in secret to be great.
No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself.
Sincerity is impossible unless it pervades the whole being, and the pretense of it saps the very foundation of character.
In Lifes small things be resolute and great To keep thy muscle trained; Knowst thou when Fate Thy measure takes or when shell say to thee, I find thee worthy; do this deed for me?
All kin' o' smily round the lips, An' teary round the lashes.
Soft-heartedness, in times like these, Shows sof'ness in the upper story.
'Tis sorrow builds the shining ladder up, Whose golden rounds are our calamities, Whereon our firm feet planting, nearer God The spirit climbs, and hath its eyes unsealed. True it is that Death's face seems stern and cold When he is sent to summon those we love; But all God's angels come to us disguised; Sorrow and sickness, poverty and death, One after another, lift their frowning masks, And we behold the Seraph's face beneath, All radiant with the Glory and the calm Of having looked upon the front of God.
Like streams that keep a summer mind Snow-hid in Jenooary.
It ['The Ancient Mariner'] is marvellous in its mastery over that delightfully fortuitous inconsequence that is the adamantine logic of dreamland.
Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown An' peeked in thru' the winder, An' there sot Huldy all alone, 'Ith no one nigh to hender.
Though old the thought and oft exprest, 'T is his at last who says it best.
All thoughts that mould the age begin Deep down within the primitive soul.
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.
Truly there is a tide in the affairs of men; but there is no gulf-stream setting forever in one direction.
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.
Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man; He 's ben on all sides thet give places or pelf; But consistency still wuz a part of his plan, He 's ben true to one party, an' thet is himself.
Ez fer war, I call it murder, There you hev it plain an' flat; I don't want to go no furder Than my Testyment fer that. .... . An' you 've gut to git up airly Ef you want to take in God.
Under the yaller pines I house, When sunshine makes 'em all sweet-scented, An' hear among their furry boughs The baskin' west-wind purr contented.
Earth's noblest thing,a woman perfected.
Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.
Let us be of good cheer, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never happen.
But John P. Robinson, he Sez they didn't know everythin' down in Judee.
His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, But hern went pity-Zekle.
'T is heaven alone that is given away; 'T is only God may be had for the asking.
'T was kin' o' kingdom-come to look On sech a blessed cretur.
Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is.
The clear, sweet singer with the crown of snow Not whiter than the thoughts that housed below.
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.
The soil out of which such men as he are made is good to be born on, good to live on, good to die for and to be buried in.
The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment.
The very room, coz she was in, Seemed warm from floor to ceilin'.
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.
There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one, Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on.
There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business.
There is no work of genius which has not been the delight of mankind, no word of genius to which the human heart and soul have not sooner or later responded.
In creating, the only hard thing is to begin: a grass blade's no easier to make than an oak.
Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.
Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.
Reputation is in itself only a farthing candle, of a wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit.
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