JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL QUOTES III

American poet & diplomat (1819-1891)


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As one lamp lights another, nor grows less,
So nobleness enkindleth nobleness.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
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"Yussouf"


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Tags: nobility


Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Rousseau and the Sentimentalists

Tags: talent


Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Dryden

Tags: society


Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

New England Two Centuries Ago

Tags: democracy


Folks never understand the folks they hate.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

The Biglow Papers

Tags: hate


Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,
Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

To the Dandelion

Tags: flowers


They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth
Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,
Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

The Present Crisis


The wisest man could ask no more of Fate
Than to be simple, modest, manly, true,
Safe from the Many -- honored by the Few;
To count as naught in World or Church or State;
But inwardly in secret to be great.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Jeffries Wyman


My gran'ther's rule was safer 'n 'tis to crow:
Don't never prophesy -- onless ye know.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

The Biglow Papers

Tags: prophecy


Summer's cheek too soon turns thin,
Days grow briefer, sunshine rare;
Autumn from his cannekin
Blows the froth to chase Despair.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"Scherzo"


Analysis is carried into everything. Even Deity is subjected to chemical tests.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

The Round Table


A marciful Providunce fashioned us holler
O' purpose thet we might our principles swaller.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

The Biglow Papers

Tags: Providence


Praise follows truth afar off, and only overtakes her at the grave.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Conversations on Some of the Old Poets

Tags: praise


If there breathe on earth a slave,
Are ye truly free and brave?
If ye do not feel the chain,
When it works a brother's pain,
Are ye not base slaves indeed,
Slaves unworthy to be freed?

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"Stanzas on Freedom"

Tags: slavery


But all God's angels come to us disguised: sorrow and sickness, poverty and death, one after other lift their frowning masks, and we behold the Seraph's face beneath, all radiant with the glory and the calm of having looked upon the front of God.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"On the Death of a Friend's Child"

Tags: angels


The pennoned reeds, that, as the west-wind blew,
Gleamed and sighed plaintively, as if they knew
What music slept enchanted in each stem,
Till Pan should choose some happy one of them,
And with wise lips enlife it through and through.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"Invita Minerva"


And as nearer and ever nearer
I felt the throb of your tread,
To be in the world grew dearer,
And my blood ran rosier red.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"Telepathy"


These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred,
Each softly lucent as a rounded moon;
The diver Omar plucked them from their bed,
Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

In a Copy of Omar Khayyam


The disjoining of deed from will, of practice from theory, is to put asunder what God has joined by an indissoluble sacrament. The soul must be tainted before the action become corrupt; and there is no self-delusion more fatal than that which makes the conscience dreamy with the anodyne of lofty sentiments, while the life is groveling and sensual.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"Rousseau", Literary Essays


Ez fer war, I call it murder--
There you hev it plain an' flat;
I don't want to go no furder
Than my Testyment fer that.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

The Biglow Papers

Tags: war