James Russell Lowell: Trending quotes

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James Russell Lowell: 350 quotes9 likes

“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.”

James Russell Lowell

On Democracy (6 October 1884)

“Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart.”

James Russell Lowell

L’ Envoi

“No man is born into the world whose work
Is not born with him. There is always work,
And tools to work withal, for those who will;
And blessed are the horny hands of toil.”

James Russell Lowell

A Glance Behind the Curtain (1843)

“Ef you want peace, the thing you've gut tu du
Is jes' to show you're up to fightin', tu.”

James Russell Lowell

No. 2.
The Biglow Papers (1848–1866), Series II (1866)

“A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.”

James Russell Lowell

Shakespeare Once More
Literary Essays, vol. III (1870-1890)

“Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us;
The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in,
The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us,
We bargain for the graves we lie in;
At the Devil's booth are all things sold
Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold.”

James Russell Lowell

Prelude to Pt. I, st. 3
The Vision of Sir Launfal (1848)

“An umbrella is of no avail against a Scotch mist.”

James Russell Lowell

On a Certain Condesceneion in Foreigners
Literary Essays, vol. III (1870-1890)

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

James Russell Lowell

The Courtin' .
The Biglow Papers (1848–1866), Series II (1866)

“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.”

James Russell Lowell

The Election in November 1860 (1860)

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

James Russell Lowell A Fable for Critics

Pt. VI - Poe and Longfellow, st. 1
A Fable for Critics (1848)

“It is by presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of a man is tested.”

James Russell Lowell

Abraham Lincoln http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/1lncn10h.htm (1864)

“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.”

James Russell Lowell

The Cathedral, st. 9 (1869)

“Before Man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.”

James Russell Lowell

"On the Capture of Certain Fugitive Slaves Near Washington" (1845)

“One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.”

James Russell Lowell

Shakespeare once more
Literary Essays, vol. II (1870–1890)

“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.”

James Russell Lowell A Fable for Critics

Pt. V - Cooper, st. 3
A Fable for Critics (1848)

“Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified,
And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.”

James Russell Lowell The Present Crisis

St. 11
The Present Crisis (1844)

“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.”

James Russell Lowell

Literary Essays, vol. II (1870–1890), Rousseau and the Sentimentalists

“This goin' ware glory waits ye haint one agreeable feetur.”

James Russell Lowell

No. 2, st. 6
The Biglow Papers (1848–1866), Series I (1848)

“It may be glorious to write
Thoughts that shall glad the two or three
High souls, like those far stars that come in sight
Once in a century.”

James Russell Lowell

An Incident in a Railroad Car

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

James Russell Lowell

Literary Essays, vol. II (1870–1890), Rousseau and the Sentimentalists