James Russell Lowell Quotes - Page 17

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• It is not a great Xerxes army of words, but a compact Greek ten thousand that march safely down to posterity.

  James Russell Lowell

  Army, Greek, March

  James Russell Lowell (1870). “Among My Books: First [-second] series”, p.239

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• Nature, they say, doth dote,
  And cannot make a man
  Save on some worn-out plan
  Repeating us by rote:
  For him her Old World moulds aside she threw
  And, choosing sweet clay from the breast
  Of the unexhausted West,
  With stuff untainted shaped a hero new.

  James Russell Lowell

  Sweet, Hero, Men

  James Russell Lowell (1871). “The poetical works of James Russell Lowell”, p.431

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• There are two kinds of genius. The first and highest may be said to speak out of the eternal to the present, and must compel its age to understand it; the second understands its age, and tells it what it wishes to be told.

  James Russell Lowell

  Two, Speaks Out, Wish

  Jared Sparks, Edward Everett, James Russell Lowell, Henry Cabot Lodge (1871). “The North American Review”, p.196

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• When I was a beggarly boy, And lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend nor a toy, But I had Aladdin's lamp.

  James Russell Lowell

  Friends, Boys, Lamps

  James Russell Lowell (1873). “The Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell”, p.387

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• 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

  Beautiful, Death, Sweet

  James Russell Lowell (2016). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)”, p.861, Delphi Classics

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• Fastidiousness is only another word for egotism; and all men who know not where to look for truth save in the narrow well of self will find their own image at the bottom, and mistake it for what they are seeking.

  James Russell Lowell

  Mistake, Men, Self

  James Russell Lowell (1870). “Among My Books: Six Essays”, p.331

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• Faith in God, faith in man, faith in work: this is the short formula in which we may sum up the teachings of the founders of New England,--a creed ample enough for this life and the next.

  James Russell Lowell

  Faith, Teaching, Men

  James Russell Lowell (1870). “Among my Books, etc”, p.229

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• 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

  Heart, Soul, Genius

  James Russell Lowell (1870). “Among my Books, etc”, p.357

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• Enthusiasm begets enthusiasm, eloquence produces conviction for the moment; but it is only by truth to Nature and the everlasting institutions of mankind that those abiding influences are won that enlarge from generation to generation.

  James Russell Lowell

  Enthusiasm, Abiding, Generations

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• A friendship counting nearly forty years is the finest kind of shade-tree I know.

  James Russell Lowell

  Funny, Friendship, Meaningful

  James Russell Lowell, Charles Eliot Norton (1904). “Letters”

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• The opening of the first grammar school was the opening of the first trench against monopoly in Church and State.

  James Russell Lowell

  Education, School, Church

  James Russell Lowell (1870). “Among my Books, etc”, p.242

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• 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

  Fall, Government, Democracy

  William Makepeace Thackeray, John Henry Newman, Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, Walter Bagehot (1910). “Essays, English and American: With Introductions and Notes”

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• 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.

  James Russell Lowell

  Reality, Government, Names

  James Russell Lowell (1910). “Essays, English and American”

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• There is a law of neutralization of forces, which hinders bodies from sinking beyond a certain depth in the sea; but in the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.

  James Russell Lowell

  Ocean, Sea, Law

  James Russell Lowell (1845). “Conversations on Some of the Old Poets”, p.62

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

  James Russell Lowell

  Death, Angel, Dying

  James Russell Lowell (1861). “Poetical Works”, p.202

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• No sincere desire of doing good need make an enemy of a single human being; that philanthropy has surely a flaw in it which cannot sympathize with the oppressor equally as with the oppressed.

  James Russell Lowell

  Enemy, Desire, Needs

  James Russell Lowell (1844). “Poems”

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• A father of the church said that property was theft, many centuries before Proudhon was born. Bourdaloue reaffirmed it. Montesquieu was the inventor of national workshops and of the theory that the state owed every man a living. Nay, was not the church herself the first organized democracy?

  James Russell Lowell

  Father, Men, Church

  James Russell Lowell (1889). “Books and Libraries: Democracy, and Other Papers”

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• O visionary world, condition strange, Where naught abiding is but only change.

  James Russell Lowell

  Change, Abiding, Visionaries

  James Russell Lowell (2016). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)”, p.757, Delphi Classics

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• 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

  Love, Truth, Men

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• The right to be a cussed fool Is safe from all devices human, It's common (ez a gin'I rule) To every critter born of woman.

  James Russell Lowell

  Fool, Safe, Common

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• God is not dumb, that he should speak no more;
  If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness
  And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor.

  James Russell Lowell

  Dumb, Soul, Religion

  James Russell Lowell (2016). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)”, p.263, Delphi Classics

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• May is a pious fraud of the almanac.

  James Russell Lowell

  Spring, May, Fraud

  'Under the Willows' (1869) l. 21

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• Be He nowhere else, God is in all that liberates and lifts, in all that humbles, sweetens, and consoles.

  James Russell Lowell

  God, Lifts, Console

  James Russell Lowell (1871). “The poetical works of James Russell Lowell”, p.446

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• It is not without reason that fame is awarded only after death. The cloud-dust of notoriety which follows and envelops the men who drive with the wind bewilders contemporary judgment.

  James Russell Lowell

  Men, Clouds, Dust

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• To fail at all is to fail utterly.

  James Russell Lowell

  Failure, Failing

  James Russell Lowell (1870). “Among my Books, etc”, p.45

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