Top 350 James Russell Lowell Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Not failure, but low aim, is crime.”

— James Russell Lowell

2. “Fate loves the fearless.”

— James Russell Lowell

3. “A wise man travels to discover himself.”

— James Russell Lowell

4. “And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days.”

— James Russell Lowell

5. “Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do that day, which must be done, whether you like it or not.”

— James Russell Lowell

Featured in: Good Morning Quotes

6. “At the devil’s booth are all things sold. Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold.”

— James Russell Lowell

7. “AND what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays; Whether we look, or whether we listen, We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;.”

— James Russell Lowell

8. “As life runs on, the road grows strange with faces new – and near the end. The milestones into headstones change, Neath every one a friend.”

— James Russell Lowell

9. “Not what we give, but what we share, for the gift without the giver is bare.”

— James Russell Lowell

10. “Light is the symbol of truth.”

— James Russell Lowell

11. “Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.”

— James Russell Lowell

12. “Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.”

— James Russell Lowell

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

— James Russell Lowell

14. “Those who know the truth are not equal to those who love it Confucius All truth is safe and nothing else is safe, but he who keeps back truth, or withholds it from men, from motives of expediency, is either a coward or a criminal.”

— James Russell Lowell

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

— James Russell Lowell

16. “Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime. Not failure, but low aim is crime.”

— James Russell Lowell

17. “In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.”

— James Russell Lowell

18. “When I was a beggarly boy, And lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend nor a toy, But I had Aladdin’s lamp...”

— James Russell Lowell

19. “That best academy, a mother’s knee.”

— James Russell Lowell

20. “The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change.”

— James Russell Lowell

21. “Humbleness is always grace; always dignity.”

— James Russell Lowell

22. “Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof.”

— James Russell Lowell

23. “Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.”

— James Russell Lowell

Featured in: Broken Heart Quotes

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

— James Russell Lowell

25. “Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.”

— James Russell Lowell

26. “The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.”

— James Russell Lowell

27. “Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.”

— James Russell Lowell

28. “Endurance is the crowning quality, And patience all the passion of great hearts.”

— James Russell Lowell

29. “Wealth may be an excellent thing, for it means power, and it means leisure, it means liberty.”

— James Russell Lowell

30. “If we see light at the end of the tunnel, it’s the light of the oncoming train.”

— James Russell Lowell

31. “The greatest homage we can pay to truth, is to use it.”

— James Russell Lowell

32. “Truth forever on the scaffold. Wrong forever on the throne. Yet that scaffold sways the future. Behind the dim unknown stands God, Within the shadow keeping watch above his own.”

— James Russell Lowell

33. “Idleness induces caprice.”

— James Russell Lowell

34. “New occasions teach new duties.”

— James Russell Lowell

35. “New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.”

— James Russell Lowell

36. “Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, himself, his hungering neighbor and me.”

— James Russell Lowell

37. “Behind the dim unknown, Standeth God with the shadow, keeping watch above his own.”

— James Russell Lowell

38. “All God’s angels come to us disguised.”

— James Russell Lowell

39. “And blessed are the horny hands of toil.”

— James Russell Lowell

40. “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

41. “A weed is no more than a flower in disguise.”

— James Russell Lowell

42. “True freedom is to share All the chains our brothers wear, And, with heart and hand, to be Earnest to make others free!”

— James Russell Lowell

43. “They enslave their children’s children who make compromise with sin.”

— James Russell Lowell

44. “And the poorest twig on the elm-tree was ridged inch deep with pearl.”

— James Russell Lowell

45. “But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet. Lessen like sound of friends departing feet; And death is beautiful as feet of friend. Coming with welcome at our journey’s end.”

— James Russell Lowell

46. “They are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak; They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think; They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three.”

— James Russell Lowell

47. “History is clarified experience.”

— James Russell Lowell

48. “Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past.”

— James Russell Lowell

49. “The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude.”

— James Russell Lowell

50. “In the scale of the destinies, brawn will never weigh so mach as brain.”

— James Russell Lowell