James Russell Lowell Quotes

Our Pilgrim stock wuz pithed with hardihood.

Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it;
We are happy now because God wills it.

The wisest man could ask no more of Fate
Than to be simple, modest, manly, true,
Safe from the Many, honored by the Few;
To count as naught in World or Church or State;
But inwardly in secret to be great.

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?

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

God, give us peace! not such as lulls to sleep,
But sword on thigh and brow with purpose knit!
And let our Ship of State to harbor sweep,
Her ports all up, her battle lanterns lit,
And her leashed thunders gathering for their leap!

Truth forever on the scaffold. Wrong forever on the throne. Yet that scaffold sways the future.

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

Ye come and go incessant; we remain
Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past;
Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot,
Of faith so nobly realized as this.

Ez to my princerples, I glory
In hevin' nothin' o' the sort.

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

If there are men who regret the Good Old Times, without too clear a notion of what they were, they should at least be thankful that we are rid of that misguided energy of faith which justifies conscience in making men unrelentingly cruel.

'T was kin' o' kingdom-come to look On sech a blessed cretur.

Not what we give,
But what we share,
For the gift
without the giver
Is bare.

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.