“She doeth little kindnesses
Which most leave undone, or despise.”

—  James Russell Lowell

My Love. iv.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "She doeth little kindnesses Which most leave undone, or despise." by James Russell Lowell?
James Russell Lowell photo
James Russell Lowell175
American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat 1819–1891

Related quotes

Yoshida Kenkō photo

“Leave undone whatever you hesitate to do.”

Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1350) japanese writer

One of the sayings of the venerable sages, called Ichigon Hödan.
Tsurezure-Gusa (Essays in Idleness)

Dorothy L. Sayers photo

“Lord Peter Wimsey: I have the most ill-regulated memory. It does those things which it ought not to do and leaves undone the things it ought to have done. But it has not yet gone on strike altogether.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Gaudy Night

Gaudy Night (1936)

Confucius photo

“Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

“She had gone so far now, she had broken so many rules and said such wicked things, that she knew she would suffer the most severe punishment; and since what was done could not be undone, she was free to be as bad as she wanted to be.”

William Nicholson (1948) British screenwriter, playwright and novelist

Source: The "Wind on Fire" Trilogy (2000-2003), The Wind Singer (Book 1), p. 35

John Keats photo

“To Sorrow
I bade good-morrow,
And thought to leave her far away behind;
But cheerly, cheerly,
She loves me dearly;
She is so constant to me, and so kind:
I would deceive her
And so leave her,
But ah! she is so constant and so kind.”

John Keats Endymion

Bk. IV, l. 173
Endymion (1818)

William James photo

“We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. …Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 4

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“He found oddly little regret in his heart for his own lost life. He'd seen more of the world than most men ever did, and he'd had his chances, though the gods knew he'd made little enough of them. Marshaling his thoughts, as he sheltered under his covers, he realized with some wonder that his greatest dismay was for the work he'd be forced to leave undone.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Source: World of the Five Gods series, The Curse of Chalion (2000), p. 233

Lin Yutang photo

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: As quoted in Pearls of Wisdom: A Harvest of Quotations From All Ages (1987) by Jerome Agel and Walter D. Glanze, p. 46. From The Importance of Living: "besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of leaving things undone" (p. 162), "the wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials" (p. 10).

Emily Brontë photo

“A person who has not done one half his day's work by ten o'clock runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Nelly Dean (Ch. VII).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)

Related topics