James Russell Lowell: Man

James Russell Lowell was American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. Explore interesting quotes on man.
James Russell Lowell: 350   quotes 8   likes

“Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;”

James Russell Lowell The Present Crisis

St. 5
The Present Crisis (1844)
Context: Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right,
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

Truth , Evil

“Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.”

James Russell Lowell

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

Beauty , Love , World , Beauty

“The capacity of indignation makes an essential part of the outfit of every honest man.”

James Russell Lowell

On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners (1869)

Parting

“To be told that we ought not to agitate the question of Slavery, when it is that which is forever agitating us, is like telling a man with the fever and ague on him to stop shaking and he will be cured. The discussion of Slavery is said to be dangerous, but dangerous to what?…Discussion is the very life of free institutions, the fruitful mother of all political and moral enlightenment, and yet the question of all questions must be tabooed.”

James Russell Lowell

The Election in November 1860 (1860)

Life , Question

“Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man;
He’s ben on all sides thet give places or pelf;
But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,—
He’s ben true to one party, an’ thet is himself.”

James Russell Lowell

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

Parting

“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!”

James Russell Lowell

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

God , Falseness

“No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself.”

James Russell Lowell

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

Sincerity

“Nature, they say, doth dote,
And cannot make a man
Save on some worn-out plan,
Repeating us by rote.”

James Russell Lowell

St. 5.
Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1169/ (July 21, 1865)

Nature

“He must be a born leader or misleader of men, or must have been sent into the world unfurnished with that modulating and restraining balance-wheel which we call a sense of humor, who, in old age, has as strong a confidence in his opinions and in the necessity of bringing the universe into conformity with them as he had in youth. In a world the very condition of whose being is that it should be in perpetual flux, where all seems mirage, and the one abiding thing is the effort to distinguish realities from appearances, the elderly man must be indeed of a singularly tough and valid fibre who is certain that he has any clarified residuum of experience, any assured verdict of reflection, that deserves to be called an opinion, or who, even if he had, feels that he is justified in holding mankind by the button while he is expounding it.”

James Russell Lowell

On Democracy (6 October 1884)

Men , Youth , Age , World

“Great truths are portions of the soul of man;
Great souls are portions of eternity.”

James Russell Lowell

Sonnet VI
Sonnets (1844)

Truth , Soul

“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.”

James Russell Lowell Sonnet

Sonnet, Jeffries Wyman (1874)

Fate , Secret , World

“The surest plan to make a Man
Is, think him so.”

James Russell Lowell

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

Thinking

“Laborin' man an' laborin' woman
Hev one glory an' one shame;
Ev'y thin' thet's done inhuman
Injers all on 'em the same.”

James Russell Lowell

No. 1, st. 5
The Biglow Papers (1848–1866), Series I (1848)

“Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is.”

James Russell Lowell

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

“How little inventiveness there is in man,
Grave copier of copies, I give thanks
For a new relish, careless to inquire
My pleasure's pedigree, if so it please,
Nobly, I mean, nor renegade to art.
The Grecian gluts me with its perfectness,
Unanswerable as Euclid, self-contained,
The one thing finished in this hasty world,
Forever finished, though the barbarous pit,
Fanatical on hearsay, stamp and shout
As if a miracle could be encored.”

James Russell Lowell

The Cathedral, st. 9

Pleasure , World , Art , Perfection

“The democratic theory is that those Constitutions are likely to prove steadiest which have the broadest base, that the right to vote makes a safety - valve of every voter, and that the best way of teaching a man how to vote is to give him the chance of practice. For the question is no longer the academic one, "Is it wise to give every man the ballot?" but rather the practical one, "Is it prudent to deprive whole classes of it any longer?" It may be conjectured that it is cheaper in the long run to lift men up than to hold them down, and that the ballot in their hands is less dangerous to society than a sense of wrong in their heads.”

James Russell Lowell

On Democracy (6 October 1884)

Men , Way , Question , Sense

“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)

World

“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)

People , History , Question , Box