Lowell, James Russell
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Lowell, James Russell
A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.
Lowell, James Russell
Critics and Criticism
A sneer is the weapon of the weak.
Lowell, James Russell
Critics and Criticism
The question of common sense is what is it good for? A question which would abolish the rose and be answered triumphantly by the cabbage.
Lowell, James Russell
Common Sense
Not failure, but low aim, is crime.
Lowell, James Russell
Crime and Criminals
Once to every person and nation come the moment to decide. In the conflict of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.
Lowell, James Russell
Decisions
Freedom is the only law which genius knows.
Lowell, James Russell
Freedom
Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise ;in statesmanship.
Lowell, James Russell
Compromise
Life is the jailer, death the angel sent to draw the unwilling bolts and set us free.
Lowell, James Russell
Death and Dying
Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
Lowell, James Russell
Deeds and Good Deeds
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.
Lowell, James Russell
Death and Dying
They are slaves who fear to speak, for the fallen and the weak.
Lowell, James Russell
Character
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.
Lowell, James Russell
Character
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.
Lowell, James Russell
Books - Reading
What a sense of security in an old book which time has criticized for us.
Lowell, James Russell
Books - Reading
The idol is the measure of the worshipper.
Lowell, James Russell
Idols
To educate the intelligence is to expand the horizon of its wants and desires.
Lowell, James Russell
Desire
Democracy give every man the right to be his own oppressor.
Lowell, James Russell
Democracy
Sorrow is the great idealizer.
Lowell, James Russell
Grief
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.
Lowell, James Russell
Faith
It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.
Lowell, James Russell
Genius
One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.
Lowell, James Russell
Experience
Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do that day, which must be done, whether you like it or not.
Lowell, James Russell
Gratitude
Fortune is the rod of the weak, and the staff of the brave.
Lowell, James Russell
Fortune
The brain can be easy to buy, but the heart never comes to market.
Lowell, James Russell
Heart
It is the rooted instinct in men to admire what is better and more beautiful than themselves.
Lowell, James Russell
Instinct
The surest plan to make a man is, think him so.
Lowell, James Russell
Praise
Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, and cries reproachful: Was it then my praise, and not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth; I claim of thee the promise of thy youth.
Lowell, James Russell
Ideals and Idealism
I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.
Lowell, James Russell
Manners
The true ideal is not opposed to the real but lies in it; and blessed are the eyes that find it.
Lowell, James Russell
Ideals and Idealism
True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgment.
Lowell, James Russell
Knowledge
He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.
Lowell, James Russell
Knowledge
Light is the symbol of truth.
Lowell, James Russell
Light
It is mediocrity which makes laws and sets mantraps and spring-guns in the realm of free song, saying thus far shalt thou go and no further.
Lowell, James Russell
Mediocrity
I don t believe in principle, but I do in interest.
Lowell, James Russell
Interest
Good luck is the willing handmaid of a upright and energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.
Lowell, James Russell
Luck
It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dangerous, but the revolts of the intelligence.
Lowell, James Russell
Intelligence and Intellectuals
Incredulity robs us of many pleasures, and gives us nothing in return.
Lowell, James Russell
Incredulity
The mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts, and dwell a hermit anywhere.
Lowell, James Russell
Introspection
An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
Lowell, James Russell
Reason
The foolish and the dead never change their opinions.
Lowell, James Russell
Opinions
Endurance is the crowning quality...
Lowell, James Russell
Perseverance
In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.
Lowell, James Russell
Morality
Blessed are they who have nothing to say and who cannot be persuaded to say it.
Lowell, James Russell
Words
What men prize most is a privilege, even if it be that of chief mourner at a funeral.
Lowell, James Russell
Privilege
Let us be of good cheer, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never happen.
Lowell, James Russell
Misfortunes
The eye is the notebook of the poet.
Lowell, James Russell
Poetry and Poets
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.
Lowell, James Russell
Truth
Folks never understand the folks they hate.
Lowell, James Russell
Understanding
Solitude is as needed to the imagination as society is wholesome to the character.
Lowell, James Russell
Solitude
Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint.
Lowell, James Russell
Self-control
Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.
Lowell, James Russell
Truth
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.
Lowell, James Russell
Reverie
Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed.
Lowell, James Russell
Truth
There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.
Lowell, James Russell
Sea
Sentiment is intellectualized emotion; emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals by the fancy.
Lowell, James Russell
Sentiment
Sincerity is impossible, unless it pervade the whole being, and the pretence of it saps the very foundation of character.
Lowell, James Russell
Sincerity
A reading machine, always wound up and going, he mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.
Lowell, James Russell
Scholars and Scholarship
Where one person shapes their life by precept and example, there are a thousand who have shaped it by impulse and circumstances.
Lowell, James Russell
Discipline
Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime . Not failure, but low aim is crime.
Lowell, James Russell
Ambition
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.
Lowell, James Russell
Age and Aging
The misfortunes hardest to bear are these which never came.
Lowell, James Russell
Anxiety
Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or by the handle.
Lowell, James Russell
Adversity
They talk about their Pilgrim blood, their birthright high and holy! a mountain-stream that ends in mud thinks is melancholy.
Lowell, James Russell
Ancestry
There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.
Lowell, James Russell
Argument
There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.
Lowell, James Russell
Weakness
If youth be a defect, it is one that we outgrow only too soon.
Lowell, James Russell
Youth
Every person born into this world their work is born with them.
Lowell, James Russell
Work