Top 350 James Russell Lowell Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgment.”

— James Russell Lowell

102. “Our American republic will endure only as long as the ideas of the men who founded it continue dominant.”

— James Russell Lowell

103. “Take winter as you find him, and he turns out to be a thoroughly honest fellow; with no nonsense in him, which is a great comfort in the long-run.”

— James Russell Lowell

104. “Earth’s noblest thing,-a woman perfected.”

— James Russell Lowell

105. “The wisest man could ask no more of fate Than to be simple, modest, manly, true, Safe from the many, honored by the few; Nothing to court in Church, or World, or State, But inwardly in secret to be great.”

— James Russell Lowell

106. “An angel stood and met my gaze, Through the low doorway of my tent; The tent is struck, the vision stays; I only know she came and went.”

— James Russell Lowell

107. “The mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts, and dwell a hermit anywhere.”

— James Russell Lowell

108. “Granting our wish is one of Fate’s saddest jokes.”

— James Russell Lowell

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

— James Russell Lowell

110. “Pride and weakness are Siamese twins.”

— James Russell Lowell

111. “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

112. “The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accursed; Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod, Than be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to God.”

— James Russell Lowell

113. “Nature fits all her children with something to do, he who would write and can’t write, can surely review.”

— James Russell Lowell

114. “Where one person shapes their life by precept and example, there are a thousand who have shaped it by impulse and circumstances.”

— James Russell Lowell

115. “It is singular how impatient men are with overpraise of others, how patient of overpraise of themselves; and yet the one does them no injury, while the other may be their ruin.”

— James Russell Lowell

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

— James Russell Lowell

117. “Violet! sweet violet! Thine eyes are full of tears; Are they wet Even yet With the thought of other years?”

— James Russell Lowell

118. “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

119. “Once to every person and nation come the moment to decide. In the conflict of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.”

— James Russell Lowell

120. “Blessed are they who have nothing to say and who cannot be persuaded to say it.”

— James Russell Lowell

121. “The dandelions and buttercups gild all the lawn: the drowsy bee stumbles among the clover tops, and summer sweetens all to me.”

— James Russell Lowell

122. “Love lives on, and hath a power to bless when they who loved are hidden in the grave.”

— James Russell Lowell

123. “And what they dare to dream of, date to do.”

— James Russell Lowell

124. “Faith in God, faith in man, faith in work: this is the short formula in which we may sum up the teachings of the founders of New England, – a creed ample enough for this life and the next.”

— James Russell Lowell

125. “Life is the jailer, death the angel sent to draw the unwilling bolts and set us free.”

— James Russell Lowell

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

— James Russell Lowell

127. “There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.”

— James Russell Lowell

128. “Evil is a far more cunning and persevering propagandist than good, for it has no inward strength, and is driven to seek countenance and sympathy.”

— James Russell Lowell

129. “I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.”

— James Russell Lowell

130. “No mud can soil us but the mud we throw.”

— James Russell Lowell

131. “The surest plan to make a man is, think him so.”

— James Russell Lowell

132. “Fortune is the rod of the weak, and the staff of the brave.”

— James Russell Lowell

133. “They have rights who dare maintain them.”

— James Russell Lowell

134. “I willingly confess to so great a partiality for trees as tempts me to respect a man in exact proportion to his respect for them.”

— James Russell Lowell

135. “Not only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not.”

— James Russell Lowell

136. “Borrowed garments never keep one warm.”

— James Russell Lowell

137. “Metaphor is no argument, though it be sometimes the gunpowder to drive one home, and imbed it in the memory.”

— James Russell Lowell

138. “And the choice goes by forever ’twixt that darkness and that light.”

— James Russell Lowell

139. “A profound common sense is the best genius for statesmanship.”

— James Russell Lowell

140. “The better part of every man’s education is that which he gives himself.”

— James Russell Lowell

141. “For Humanity sweeps onward: where today the martyr stands, On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands; Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn, While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return To glean up the scattered ashes into History’s golden urn.”

— James Russell Lowell

142. “Whom the heart of man shuts out, Sometimes the heart of God takes in, And fences them all round about With silence mid the worlds loud din.”

— James Russell Lowell

143. “To win the secret of a weed’s plain heart.”

— James Russell Lowell

144. “For men in earnest have no time to waste In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth.”

— James Russell Lowell

145. “Reputation is only a candle, of wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit.”

— James Russell Lowell

146. “Tyrants are but the spawn of Ignorance, Begotten by the slaves they trample on.”

— James Russell Lowell

147. “Wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.”

— James Russell Lowell

148. “If youth be a defect, it is one that we outgrow only too soon.”

— James Russell Lowell

149. “The pressure of public opinion is like the pressure of the atmosphere; you can’t see it – but all the same, it is sixteen pounds to the square inch.”

— James Russell Lowell

150. “For only by unlearning Wisdom comes.”

— James Russell Lowell