James Russell Lowell Quotes

In vain we call old notions fudge,
And bend our conscience to our dealing;
The Ten Commandments will not budge,
And stealing will continue stealing.

The one thet fust gits mad 's 'most ollers wrong.

Not only around our infancy
Doth heaven with all its splendors lie;
Daily, with souls that cringe and plot,
We Sinais climb and know it not.

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.

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

Their problem was how to adapt English principles and precedents to the new conditions of American life, and they solved it with singular discretion. They put as many obstacles as they could contrive, not in the way of the people's will, but of their whim.

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.

Sentiment is intellectualized emotion, — emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals by the fancy.

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.

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or by the handle.

Both of them mean that Labor has no rights which Capital is bound to respect,—that there is no higher law than human interest and cupidity.

If there breathe on earth a slave, Are ye truly free and brave? If ye do not feel the chain, When it works a brother's pain, Are ye not base slaves indeed, Slaves unworthy to be freed?

If I were asked what book is better than a cheap book, I should answer that there is one book better than a cheap book, — and that is a book honestly come by.

I du believe with all my soul
In the gret Press's freedom,
To pint the people to the goal
An' in the traces lead 'em.

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