James Russell Lowell Quotes

One day with life and heart
Is more than time enough to find a world.

There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge,
Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge.

The traitor to humanity is the traitor most accursed;
Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod,
Than to be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to God!

Blessed are they who have nothing to say, and who cannot be persuaded to say it.

Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this, that you are dreadfully like other people.

His words were simple words enough,
And yet he used them so,
That what in other mouths was rough
In his seemed musical and low.

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.

Along A River-Side, I Know Not Where,
I walked one night in mystery of dream;
A chill creeps curdling yet beneath my hair,
To think what chanced me by the pallid gleam
Of a moon-wraith that waned through haunted air.

All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.

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

In creating, the only hard thing's to begin;
A grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak,
If you've once found the way you've achieved the grand stroke.

Though old the thought and oft exprest,
'Tis his at last who says it best.

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.

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

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