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James Russell Lowell
193 quotes
“Their children learned the lesson of compromise only too well, and it was the application of it to a question of fundamental morals that cost us our civil war. We learned once for all that compromise makes a good umbrella but a poor roof; that it is a temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed. She is said to lie at the bottom of a well, for the very reason, perhaps, that whoever looks down in search of her sees his own image at the bottom, and is persuaded not only that he has seen the goddess, but that she is far better looking than he had imagined.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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. With the growth of democracy grows also the fear, if not the danger, that this atmosphere may be corrupted with poisonous exhalations from lower and more malarious levels, and the question of sanitation becomes more instant and pressing. Democracy in its best sense is merely the letting in of light and air.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Communism means barbarism, but Socialism means, or wishes to mean, cooperation and community of interests, sympathy, the giving to the hands not so large a share as to the brains, but a larger share than hitherto in the wealth they must combine to produce - means, in short, the practical application of Christianity to life, and has in it the secret of an orderly and benign reconstruction.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the scales of the destinies brawn will never weigh so much as brain. Our healing is not in the storm or in the whirlwind, it is not in monarchies, or aristocracies, or democracies, but will be revealed by the still small voice that speaks to the conscience and the heart, prompting us to a wider and wiser humanity.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dangerous, but the revolts of intelligence.”
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.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The wisest man could ask no more of Fate Than to be simple, modest, manly, true, Safe from the Many, honored by the Few; To count as naught in World or Church or State; But inwardly in secret to be great.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) first seen 1874 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Jeffries Wyman. Died September 4, 1874" (1874), p. 38
“The Maple puts her corals on in May, While loitering frosts about the lowlands cling, To be in tune with what the robins sing.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) first seen 1875 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sonnet, The Maple" (1875), p. 113
“In life's small things be resolute and great To keep thy muscle trained: know'st thou when Fate Thy measure takes, or when she'll say to thee, "I find thee worthy; do this deed for me"?”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The encroachments of Slavery upon our national policy have been like those of a glacier in a Swiss valley. Inch by inch, the huge dragon with his glittering scales and crests of ice coils itself onward, an anachronism of summer, the relic of a bygone world where such monsters swarmed. But it has its limit, the kindlier forces of Nature work against it, and the silent arrows of the sun are still, as of old, fatal to the frosty Python. Geology tells us that such enormous devastators once covered the face of the earth, but the benignant sunlight of heaven touched them, and they faded silently, leaving no trace but here and there the scratches of their talons, and the gnawed boulders scattered where they made their lair. We have entire faith in the benignant influence of Truth, the sunlight of the moral world, and believe that slavery, like other worn-out systems, will melt gradually before it.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He must be a born leader or misleader of men, or must have been sent into the world unfurnished with that modulating and restraining balance-wheel which we call a sense of humor, who, in old age, has as strong a confidence in his opinions and in the necessity of bringing the universe into conformity with them as he had in youth. In a world the very condition of whose being is that it should be in perpetual flux, where all seems mirage, and the one abiding thing is the effort to distinguish realities from appearances, the elderly man must be indeed of a singularly tough and valid fibre who is certain that he has any clarified residuum of experience, any assured verdict of reflection, that deserves to be called an opinion, or who, even if he had, feels that he is justified in holding mankind by the button while he is expounding it.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have hinted that what people are afraid of in democracy is less the thing itself than what they conceive to be its necessary adjuncts and consequences. It is supposed to reduce all mankind to a dead level of mediocrity in character and culture, to vulgarize men's conceptions of life, and therefore their code of morals, manners, and conduct — to endanger the rights of property and possession. But I believe that the real gravamen of the charges lies in the habit it has of making itself generally disagreeable by asking the Powers that Be at the most inconvenient moment whether they are the powers that ought to be. If the powers that be are in a condition to give a satisfactory answer to this inevitable question, they need feel in no way discomfited by it.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The framers of the American Constitution were far from wishing or intending to found a democracy in the strict sense of the word, though, as was inevitable, every expansion of the scheme of government they elaborated has been in a democratical direction. But this has been generally the slow result of growth, and not the sudden innovation of theory; in fact, they had a profound disbelief in theory, and knew better than to commit the folly of breaking with the past. They were not seduced by the French fallacy that a new system of government could be ordered like a new suit of clothes. They would as soon have thought of ordering a new suit of flesh and skin. It is only on the roaring loom of time that the stuff is woven for such a vesture of their thought and experience as they were meditating. They recognized fully the value of tradition and habit as the great allies of permanence and stability. They all had that distaste for innovation which belonged to their race, and many of them a distrust of human nature derived from their creed.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The democratic theory is that those Constitutions are likely to prove steadiest which have the broadest base, that the right to vote makes a safety - valve of every voter, and that the best way of teaching a man how to vote is to give him the chance of practice. For the question is no longer the academic one, "Is it wise to give every man the ballot?" but rather the practical one, "Is it prudent to deprive whole classes of it any longer?" It may be conjectured that it is cheaper in the long run to lift men up than to hold them down, and that the ballot in their hands is less dangerous to society than a sense of wrong in their heads.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do not believe in violent changes, nor do I expect them. Things in possession have a very firm grip. One of the strongest cements of society is the conviction of mankind that the state of things into which they are born is a part of the order of the universe, as natural, let us say, as that the sun should go round the earth. It is a conviction that they will not surrender except on compulsion, and a wise society should look to it that this compulsion be not put upon them. For the individual man there is no radical cure, outside of human nature itself, for the evils to which human nature is heir.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To win the secret of a weed's plain heart.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“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.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“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.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“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.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“'T is heaven alone that is given away; 'T is only God may be had for the asking.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“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.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,-- Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one, Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“Nature fits all her children with something to do.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“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.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“Though old the thought and oft exprest, 'T is his at last who says it best.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“The one thing finished in this hasty world.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“A wise scepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“Aspiration sees only one side of every question; possession many.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“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.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“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.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“It ["The Ancient Mariner"] is marvellous in its mastery over that delightfully fortuitous inconsequence that is the adamantine logic of dreamland.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“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.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source