JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL QUOTES
American poet & diplomat (1819-1891)
A wise man travels to discover himself.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Fireside Travels
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
Sixty-eighth Birthday
Let us be thankful that there is no court by which we can be excluded from our share in the inheritance of the great poets of all ages and countries, to which our simple humanity entitles us.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Round Table
How little inventiveness there is in man,
Grave copier of copies.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Cathedral
At the devil's booth are all things sold. Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Vision of Sir Launfal
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
On Democracy
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Round Table
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne--
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Present Crisis
Earth's noblest thing -- a woman perfected.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Irené
True freedom is to share
All the chains our brothers wear
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Stanzas on Freedom"
God, give us Peace! not such as lulls to sleep,
But sword on thigh and brow with purpose knit!
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Washers of the Shroud
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
Rousseau and the Sentimentalists
One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Among My Books
Nature fits all her children with something to do,
He who would write and can't write, can surely review.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
A Fable for Critics
Though old the thought and oft expressed,
'Tis his at last who says it best.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
For an Autograph
It is quite too common a practice, both in readers and the more superficial class of critics, to judge a book by what it is not, a matter much easier to determine than what it is.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Round Table
Before Man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"On the Capture of Certain Fugitive Slaves Near Washington"
Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
L'Envoi
Endurance is the crowning quality,
And patience all the passion of great hearts.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Columbus
Be noble! and the nobleness that lies
In other men, sleeping but never dead,
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Sonnet IV