Quotes by James Russell Lowell
Who knows whither the clouds have fled? In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake,...
Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.
What men prize most is a privilege, even if it be that of chief mourner at a funeral.
We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder 'censorship,' we call it 'concern for commercial viability.'
In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.
A poet must need be before his own age, to be even with posterity.
Blessed are they who have nothing to say and who cannot be persuaded to say it.
Where one person shapes their life by precept and example, there are a thousand who have shaped it by impulse and circumstances.
A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.
All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
There is no good arguing with the inevitible. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.
One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.
Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
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.
They talk about their Pilgrim blood, Their birthright high and holy A mountain-stream that ends in mud Methinks is melancholy.
But all God's angels come to us disguised...
Wealth may be an ancient thing, for it means power, it means leisure, it means liberty.
