“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.”
Source: Fireside Travels
“Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.”
Source: Among My Books: Six Essays
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)
“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.”
“The Holy Supper is kept, indeed,
In whatso we share with anothers need;
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.”
Source: The Vision of Sir Launfal And Other Poems by James Russell Lowell, With a Biographical Sketch and Notes, a Portrait and Other Illustrations
“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.”
Source: My Study Windows
“Reading enables us to see with the keenest eyes, to hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time.”
Source: Books and Libraries: Democracy, and Other Papers
“His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, But hern went pity-Zekle.”
Source: The poetical works of James Russell Lowell
“To win the secret of a weed's plain heart.”
Source: The poetical works of James Russell Lowell
“It is only by instigation of the wrongs of men that what are called the Rights of Man become turbulent and dangerous.”
“And blessed are the horny hands of toil.”
“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.”
Source: Democracy, and Other Addresses
“Wealth may be an excellent thing, for it means power, and it means leisure, it means liberty.”
Source: The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry ...
“No man is born into the world whose work is not born with him. There is always work, and tools to work with, for those who will, and blessed are the horny hands of toil. The busy world shoves angrily aside the man who stands with arms akimbo until occasion tells him what to do; and he who waits to have his task marked out shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled.”
Source: The poetical works of James Russell Lowell
“I don't believe in princerple, But oh I du in interest.”
Source: Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)
“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.”
“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”
Source: Among my Books: Contents: Dryden. Witchcraft. Shakespeare once more. New England two centuries ago. Lessing. Rousseau and the Sentimentalists
“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.”
“They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin.”
Source: The poetical works of James Russell Lowell
“Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past.”
Source: Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)
“Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving.”
Source: The poetical works of James Russell Lowell
“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?”
Source: Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)
“Not a deed would he do,
Not a word would he utter,
Till he's weighed its relation
To plain bread and butter.”
“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.”
Source: The poetical works of James Russell Lowell
“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."”
Source: Among My Books: First [-second] series
“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.”
Source: The poetical works of James Russell Lowell
“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.”
Source: The poetical works of James Russell Lowell
“Earth's biggest country 's gut her soul, An' risen up earth's greatest nation.”
Source: Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)
“Heaven is neither here nor there to me. Everywhere and nowhere. Just not in between, But I believe in Heaven.”
“Aspiration sees only one side of every question; possession many.”
Source: Among my Books: Contents: Dryden. Witchcraft. Shakespeare once more. New England two centuries ago. Lessing. Rousseau and the Sentimentalists
“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, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight, And the choice goes by forever, ’twixt that darkness and that light.”
“The snow had begun in the gloaming, and busily all the night had been heaping field and highway with a silence deep and white.”
Source: Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)
“A poet must need be before his own age, to be even with posterity”
Source: Poems
“The better part of every man's education is that which he gives himself.”
Source: Books and Libraries: Democracy, and Other Papers
“Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it; We are happy now because God wills it.”
Source: The Vision of Sir Launfal And Other Poems by James Russell Lowell, With a Biographical Sketch and Notes, a Portrait and Other Illustrations
“Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof.”
“Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.”
“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.”
Source: The Poetical works
“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.”
Source: Democracy, and Other Addresses
“Before Man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.”
“Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.”
Source: The poetical works of James Russell Lowell
“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.”
Source: The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Ten Volumes: Literary and political addresses
“Most men make the voyage of life as if they carried sealed orders which they were not to open till they were fairly in mid-ocean.”
Source: Among My Books: First [-second] series
“'T is heaven alone that is given away; 'T is only God may be had for the asking.”
Source: The Vision of Sir Launfal And Other Poems by James Russell Lowell, Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Julian W. Abernethy, PH.D.
“I tell ye wut, my judgment is you're pooty sure to fail, Ez long 'z the head keeps turnin' back for counsel to the the tail.”
Source: The poetical works of James Russell Lowell
“How I do love the earth. I feel it thrill under my feet. I feel somehow as if it were conscious of my love, as if something passed into my dancing blood from it.”
Source: The Vision of Sir Launfal And Other Poems by James Russell Lowell, Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Julian W. Abernethy, PH.D.
“They talk about their Pilgrim blood, their birthright high and holy! a mountain-stream that ends in mud thinks is melancholy.”
Source: The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell
“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.”
“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.”
Source: Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)
“Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.”
Source: The poetical works of James Russell Lowell
