James Russell Lowell Quotes

They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.

What a sense of security in an old book which Time has criticized for us!

There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea; I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.

At the devil's booth are all things sold. Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold.

Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.

My gran'ther's rule was safer 'n 'tis to crow:
Don't never prophesy — onless ye know.

For though he builds glorious temples, 'tis odd
He leaves never a doorway to get in a god.

For a cap and bells our lives we pay,
Bubbles we earn with a whole soul's tasking:
'Tis heaven alone that is given away,
'Tis only God may be had for the asking.

To be told that we ought not to agitate the question of Slavery, when it is that which is forever agitating us, is like telling a man with the fever and ague on him to stop shaking and he will be cured. The discussion of Slavery is said to be dangerous, but dangerous to what?...Discussion is the very life of free institutions, the fruitful mother of all political and moral enlightenment, and yet the question of all questions must be tabooed.

Ez fer war, I call it murder—
There you hev it plain an' flat;
I don't want to go no furder
Than my Testyment fer that.

She doeth little kindnesses
Which most leave undone, or despise.

"On Lincoln: "A profound common sense is the best genius for statesmanship.

They come transfigured back,
Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,
Beautiful evermore, and with the rays
Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation!

There is no good arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.

Truly there is a tide in the affairs of men; but there is no gulf-stream setting forever in one direction.