Quotes By James Russell Lowell

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

True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgment.

Democracy is the form of government that gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.

Freedom is the only law which genius knows.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Children are God's Apostles, sent forth, day by day, to preach of love, and hope, and peace.

No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself.

Death is delightful. Death is dawn, The waking from a weary night Of fevers unto truth and light.

Each day the world is born anew for him who takes it rightly.

All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.

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

Good luck is the willing handmaid of a upright and energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.

What men prize most is a privilege, even if it be that of chief mourner at a funeral.

Fortune is the rod of the weak, and the staff of the brave.

On one issue at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women.

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

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

Fate loves the fearless.

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.

The heart forgets its sorrow and ache.

It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.

Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed.

Poetry is something to make us wiser and better, by continually revealing those types of beauty and truth, which God has set in all men's souls.

Not failure, but low aim, is crime.

Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.