James Russell Lowell Quotes

Long habit had accustomed the American people to the notion of a party in power, and of a President as its creature and organ, while the more vital fact, that the executive for the time being represents the abstract idea of government as a permanent principle superior to all party and all private interest, had gradually become unfamiliar.

Laborin' man an' laborin' woman Hev one glory an' one shame;
Ev'y thin' thet's done inhuman Injers all on 'em the same.

Their children learned the lesson of compromise only too well, and it was the application of it to a question of fundamental morals that cost us our civil war. We learned once for all that compromise makes a good umbrella but a poor roof; that it is a temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.

Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof.

Here was a type of the true elder race,
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.

In a society like ours, where every man may transmute his private thought into history and destiny by dropping it into the ballot-box, a peculiar responsibility rests upon the individual. Nothing can absolve us from doing our best to look at all public questions as citizens, and therefore in some sort as administrators and rulers. For, though during its term of office the government be practically as independent of the popular will as that of Russia, yet every fourth year the people are called upon to pronounce upon the conduct of their affairs.

The Holy Supper is kept, indeed,
In whatso we share with another's need,—
Not that which we give, but what we share,—
For the gift without the giver is bare;
Who bestows himself with his alms feeds three,—
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me.

Like streams that keep a summer mind
Snow-hid in Jenooary.

In general those who nothing have to say
Contrive to spend the longest time in doing it.

Under the yaller pines I house,
When sunshine makes 'em all sweet-scented,
An' hear among their furry boughs
The baskin' west-wind purr contented.

Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.

These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred,
Each softly lucent as a rounded moon;
The diver Omar plucked them from their bed,
Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread.

From the summit of power men no longer turn their eyes upward, but begin to look about them. Aspiration sees only one side of every question; possession, many.

Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown
An' peeked in thru' the winder,
An there sot Huldy all alone,
'ith no one nigh to hender.

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.