James Russell Lowell: Quotes about men

James Russell Lowell was American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. Explore interesting quotes on men.
James Russell Lowell: 350 quotes9 likes

“What men call treasure, and the gods call dross,
Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving,
Only secure in every one's conniving,
A long account of nothings paid with loss.”

James Russell Lowell

St. 3. <br class="br"> Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1169/ (July 21, 1865) <br class="br">Context: The little that we do<br>Is but half-nobly true;<br>With our laborious hiving<br>What men call treasure, and the gods call dross,<br>Life seems a jest of Fate&#x27;s contriving,<br>Only secure in every one&#x27;s conniving,<br>A long account of nothings paid with loss.

“From the summit of power men no longer turn their eyes upward, but begin to look about them. Aspiration sees only one side of every question; possession, many.”

James Russell Lowell

Literary Essays, vol. II (1870–1890), New England Two Centuries Ago

“Be noble! and the nobleness that lies
In other men, sleeping but never dead,
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.”

James Russell Lowell

Sonnet IV
Sonnets (1844)

“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)

“It ain't by princerples nor men
My preudunt course is steadied—
I scent wich pays the best, an' then
Go into it baldheaded.”

James Russell Lowell

No. 6, st. 10
The Biglow Papers (1848–1866), Series I (1848)

“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.”

James Russell Lowell

Witchcraft
Literary Essays, vol. II (1870–1890)

“Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold-bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences in belief.”

James Russell Lowell

Witchcraft
Literary Essays, vol. II (1870–1890)

“Here was a type of the true elder race,
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.”

James Russell Lowell

St. 5. <br class="br"> Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1169/ (July 21, 1865)

“The soil out of which such men as he are made is good to be born on, good to live on, good to die for and to be buried in.”

James Russell Lowell

Garfield (24 September 1881)

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

James Russell Lowell

Literary Essays, vol. II (1870–1890), New England Two Centuries Ago

“New times demand new measures and new men;
The world advances, and in time outgrows
The laws which in our father's times were best;
And doubtless, after us, some purer scheme
Will be shaped out by wiser men than we,
Made wiser by the steady growth of truth.”

James Russell Lowell

A Glance Behind the Curtain (1843)

“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)

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

James Russell Lowell

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