JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL QUOTES V

American poet & diplomat (1819-1891)

Aspiration sees only one side of every question; possession, many.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Among my Books, New England Two Centuries Ago

Tags: possessions


Two meanings have our lightest fantasies --
One of the flesh, and of the spirit one.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Sonnet XXXIV

Tags: fantasy


Great truths are portions of the soul of man.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Sonnet VI

Tags: truth


Poets so their verses write,
Heap them full of life and light,
And then fling them to the rude
Mumbling of the multitude.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"Eleanor Makes Macaroons"


Here shall a realm rise
Mighty in manhood;
Justice and Mercy
Here set a stronghold
Safe without spear.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"The Voyage to Vinland"


Not what we give, but what we share,
For the gift without the giver is bare.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"The Vision of Sir Launfal"

Tags: giving


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.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Festina Lente, Moral


Reputation is in itself only a farthing-candle, of wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"Keats", Literary Essays

Tags: reputation


Fools, when their roof-tree falls, think it doomsday.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"The Voyage to Vinland"

Tags: fools


Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides
Into the silent hollow of the past;
What is there that abides
To make the next age better for the last?

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration


For there's nothing we read of in torture's inventions,
Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of intentions.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

A Fable for Critics

Tags: intentions


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. Every man was to be trained, not only to the use of arms, but of his wits also; and it is these which alone make the others effective weapons for the maintenance of freedom.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"New England Two Centuries Ago", The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose

Tags: education


New conditions of life will stimulate thought and give new forms to its expression.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

The Round Table

Tags: life


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

On Democracy

Tags: democracy


And I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his present repute for the freedom to think,
And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t'other half for the freedom to speak,
Caring naught for what vengeance the mob has in store,
Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or lower.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Cooper

Tags: thinking


The English Puritans pulled down church and state to rebuild Zion on the ruins, and all the while it was not Zion, but America, they were building.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"New England Two Centuries Ago", The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose

Tags: America


This goin' ware glory waits ye haint one agreeable feetur.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

The Biglow Papers

Tags: glory


The course of a great statesman resembles that of navigable rivers, avoiding immovable obstacles with noble bends of concession, seeking the broad levels of opinion on which men soonest settle and longest dwell, following and marking the almost imperceptible slopes of national tendency, yet always aiming at direct advances, always recruited from sources nearer heaven, and sometimes bursting open paths of progress and fruitful human commerce through what seem the eternal barriers of both.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"Abraham Lincoln", Political Essays

Tags: politics


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

On Democracy

Tags: truth


There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

New England Two Centuries Ago

Tags: business