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James Russell Lowell

193 quotes

• “In a society like ours, where every man may transmute his private thought into history and destiny by dropping it into the ballot-box, a peculiar responsibility rests upon the individual. Nothing can absolve us from doing our best to look at all public questions as citizens, and therefore in some sort as administrators and rulers. For, though during its term of office the government be practically as independent of the popular will as that of Russia, yet every fourth year the people are called upon to pronounce upon the conduct of their affairs.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Whatever be the effect of slavery upon the States where it exists, there can be no doubt that its moral influence upon the North has been most disastrous. It has compelled our politicians into that first fatal compromise with their moral instincts and hereditary principles which makes all consequent ones easy; it has accustomed us to makeshifts instead of statesmanship, to subterfuge instead of policy, to party-platforms for opinions, and to a defiance of the public sentiment of the civilized world for patriotism.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Both of them mean that Labor has no rights which Capital is bound to respect,—that there is no higher law than human interest and cupidity.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “To be told that we ought not to agitate the question of Slavery, when it is that which is forever agitating us, is like telling a man with the fever and ague on him to stop shaking and he will be cured. The discussion of Slavery is said to be dangerous, but dangerous to what?...Discussion is the very life of free institutions, the fruitful mother of all political and moral enlightenment, and yet the question of all questions must be tabooed.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It is the tendency of all creeds, opinions, and political dogmas that have once defined themselves in institutions to become inoperative.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We are persuaded that the election of Mr. Lincoln will do more than anything else to appease the excitement of the country. He has proved both his ability and his integrity; he has had experience enough in public affairs to make him a statesman, and not enough to make him a politician.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “What a sense of security in an old book which Time has criticized for us!”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is, and what shifts we make to escape thinking. There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides Into the silent hollow of the past; What is there that abides To make the next age better for the last?”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The little that we do Is but half-nobly true; With our laborious hiving What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “They come transfigured back, Secure from change in their high-hearted ways, Beautiful evermore, and with the rays Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation!”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The snow had begun in the gloaming, And busily all the night Had been heaping field and highway With a silence deep and white.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) first seen 1849 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The First Snowfall" (1849), stanza 1, p. 32

• “Though old the thought and oft exprest, 'Tis his at last who says it best.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) first seen 1868 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: For an Autograph" (1868), p. 47

• “Not failure, but low aim, is crime.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) first seen 1868 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: For an Autograph" (1868), p. 48

• “Darkness is strong, and so is Sin, But only God endures forever!”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Villa Franca. 1859", p. 188

• “Along A River-Side, I Know Not Where, I walked one night in mystery of dream; A chill creeps curdling yet beneath my hair, To think what chanced me by the pallid gleam Of a moon-wraith that waned through haunted air.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Washers of the Shroud. October 1861", stanza 1, p. 231

• “God, give us peace! not such as lulls to sleep, But sword on thigh and brow with purpose knit! And let our Ship of State to harbor sweep, Her ports all up, her battle lanterns lit, And her leashed thunders gathering for their leap!”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Washers of the Shroud. October 1861", stanza 21, p. 237

• “Ye come and go incessant; we remain Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past; Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot, Of faith so nobly realized as this.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “How little inventiveness there is in man, Grave copier of copies, I give thanks For a new relish, careless to inquire My pleasure's pedigree, if so it please, Nobly, I mean, nor renegade to art. The Grecian gluts me with its perfectness, Unanswerable as Euclid, self-contained, The one thing finished in this hasty world, Forever finished, though the barbarous pit, Fanatical on hearsay, stamp and shout As if a miracle could be encored.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “What a sense of security in an old book which Time has criticised for us!”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The question of common sense is always "What is it good for?"—a question which would abolish the rose and be answered triumphantly by the cabbage.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) first seen 1870 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Chaucer," North American Review (July 1870)

• “Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold-bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences in belief.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If there are men who regret the Good Old Times, without too clear a notion of what they were, they should at least be thankful that we are rid of that misguided energy of faith which justifies conscience in making men unrelentingly cruel.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, and not progress, the highest lesson of statecraft.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “From the summit of power men no longer turn their eyes upward, but begin to look about them. Aspiration sees only one side of every question; possession, many.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Truly there is a tide in the affairs of men; but there is no gulf-stream setting forever in one direction.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Simple as it seems, it was a great discovery that the key of knowledge could turn both ways, that it could open, as well as lock, the door of power to the many.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Sentiment is intellectualized emotion, — emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals by the fancy.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “An umbrella is of no avail against a Scotch mist.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I hear America sometimes playfully accused of sending you all your storms, and am in the habit of parrying the charge by alleging that we are enabled to do this because, in virtue of our protective system, we can afford to make better bad weather than anybody else. And what wiser use could we make of it than to export it in return for the paupers which some European countries are good enough to send over to us who have not attained to the same skill in the manufacture of them?”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat. And in this case, also, the prudent will prepare themselves to encounter what they cannot prevent. Some people advise us to put on the brakes, as if the movement of which we are conscious were that of a railway train running down an incline. But a metaphor is no argument, though it be sometimes the gunpowder to drive one home and imbed it in the memory.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “One of the most curious of these frenzies of exclusion was that against the emancipation of the Jews. All share in the government of the world was denied for centuries to perhaps the ablest, certainly the most tenacious, race that had ever lived in it - the race to whom we owed our religion and the purest spiritual stimulus and consolation to be found in all literature - a race in which ability seems as natural and hereditary as the curve of their noses, and whose blood, furtively mingling with the bluest bloods in Europe, has quickened them with its own indomitable impulsion.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Few people take the trouble of trying to find out what democracy really is. Yet this would be a great help, for it is our lawless and uncertain thoughts, it is the indefiniteness of our impressions, that fill darkness, whether mental or physical, with spectres and hobgoblins. Democracy is nothing more than an experiment in government, more likely to succeed in a new soil, but likely to be tried in all soils, which must stand or fall on its own merits as others have done before it. For there is no trick of perpetual motion in politics any more than in mechanics.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Their problem was how to adapt English principles and precedents to the new conditions of American life, and they solved it with singular discretion. They put as many obstacles as they could contrive, not in the way of the people's will, but of their whim.”

  James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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