Famous Quotes by James Russell Lowell (67 Quotations)

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

James Russell Lowell – [Manners]

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

James Russell Lowell – [Youth]

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

James Russell Lowell – [Morality]

Incredulity robs us of many pleasures, and gives us nothing in return.

James Russell Lowell – [Incredulity]

It is mediocrity which makes laws and sets mantraps and spring-guns in the realm of free song, saying thus far shalt thou go and no further.

James Russell Lowell – [Mediocrity]

It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dangerous, but the revolts of the intelligence.

James Russell Lowell – [Intelligence and Intellectuals]

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

James Russell Lowell – [Genius]

It is the rooted instinct in men to admire what is better and more beautiful than themselves.

James Russell Lowell – [Instinct]

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

James Russell Lowell – [Misfortunes]

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

James Russell Lowell – [Death and Dying]

Light is the symbol of truth.

James Russell Lowell – [Light]

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

James Russell Lowell – [Adversity]

Not failure, but low aim, is crime.

James Russell Lowell – [Crime and Criminals]

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 – [Decisions]

One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.

James Russell Lowell – [Experience]

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 – [Character]

Sentiment is intellectualized emotion; emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals by the fancy.

James Russell Lowell – [Sentiment]

Sincerity is impossible, unless it pervade the whole being, and the pretence of it saps the very foundation of character.

James Russell Lowell – [Sincerity]

Solitude is as needed to the imagination as society is wholesome to the character.

James Russell Lowell – [Solitude]

Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, and cries reproachful: ''Was it then my praise, and not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth; I claim of thee the promise of thy youth.''

James Russell Lowell – [Ideals and Idealism]