James Russell Lowell Quotes

That love for one, from which there doth not spring
Wide love for all, is but a worthless thing.

Greatly begin! though thou hast time
But for a line, be that sublime — Not failure, but low aim, is crime.

I don't believe in princerple,
But oh I du in interest.

Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart.

Communism means barbarism, but Socialism means, or wishes to mean, cooperation and community of interests, sympathy, the giving to the hands not so large a share as to the brains, but a larger share than hitherto in the wealth they must combine to produce - means, in short, the practical application of Christianity to life, and has in it the secret of an orderly and benign reconstruction.

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.

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

under the influence of a political framework like our own.

The real doth not clip the poet's wings,—
To win the secret of a weed’s plain heart
Reveals some clue to spiritual things,
And stumbling guess becomes firm-footed art.

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some new decision, offering each bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever twixt that darkness and that light.

Of my merit
On thet pint you yourself may jedge;
All is, I never drink no sperit,
Nor I haint never signed no pledge.

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

We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great,
Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn this iron helm of fate,
But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din,
List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,—
"They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin."

And I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his present repute for the freedom to think,
And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t'other half for the freedom to speak, Caring naught for what vengeance the mob has in store, Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or lower.

There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business.