One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.
– James Russell Lowell
All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
– James Russell Lowell
An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
– James Russell Lowell
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.
– James Russell Lowell
Blessed are they who have nothing to say and who cannot be persuaded to say it.
– James Russell Lowell
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.
– James Russell Lowell
Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.
– James Russell Lowell
Death is delightful. Death is dawn, The waking from a weary night Of fevers unto truth and light.
– James Russell Lowell
Each day the world is born anew for him who takes it rightly.
– James Russell Lowell
Every person born into this world their work is born with them.
– James Russell Lowell
Fate loves the fearless.
– James Russell Lowell
Folks never understand the folks they hate.
– James Russell Lowell
Fortune is the rod of the weak, and the staff of the brave.
– James Russell Lowell
Good heavens, of what uncostly material is our earthly happiness composed... if we only knew it. What incomes have we not had from a flower, and how unfailing are the dividends of the seasons.
– James Russell Lowell
Good luck is the willing handmaid of a upright and energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.
– James Russell Lowell
Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime . Not failure, but low aim is crime.
– James Russell Lowell
I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.
– James Russell Lowell
If youth be a defect, it is one that we outgrow only too soon.
– James Russell Lowell
In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.
– James Russell Lowell
Incredulity robs us of many pleasures, and gives us nothing in return.
– James Russell Lowell
It is by presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of man is tested.
– James Russell Lowell
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
It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.
– James Russell Lowell
Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.
– James Russell Lowell
Light is the symbol of truth.
– James Russell Lowell
Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.
– James Russell Lowell
On one issue at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women.
– James Russell Lowell
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
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
Sorrow is the great idealizer.
– James Russell Lowell
Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do that day, which must be done, whether you like it or not.
– James Russell Lowell
The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.
– James Russell Lowell
The greatest homage we can pay to truth, is to use it.
– James Russell Lowell
The heart forgets its sorrow and ache.
– James Russell Lowell
The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers is that which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience.
– James Russell Lowell
The surest plan to make a man is, think him so.
– James Russell Lowell
There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.
– James Russell Lowell
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
There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.
– James Russell Lowell
They talk about their Pilgrim blood, their birthright high and holy! a mountain-stream that ends in mud thinks is melancholy.
– James Russell Lowell
Those who know the truth are not equal to those who love it Confucius All truth is safe and nothing else is safe, but he who keeps back truth, or withholds it from men, from motives of expediency, is either a coward or a criminal.
– James Russell Lowell
To educate the intelligence is to expand the horizon of its wants and desires.
– James Russell Lowell
Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.
– James Russell Lowell
Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed.
– James Russell Lowell
Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.
– James Russell Lowell
We look at death through the cheap-glazed windows of the flesh, and believe him the monster which the flawed and cracked glass represents him.
– James Russell Lowell
What a sense of security in an old book which time has criticized for us.
– James Russell Lowell
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
Who's not sat tense before his own heart's curtain.
– James Russell Lowell
Toward no crime have men shown themselves so cold-bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief.
– James Russell Lowell
Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.
– James Russell Lowell
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.
– James Russell Lowell
Freedom is the only law which genius knows.
– James Russell Lowell
Endurance is the crowning quality, And patience all the passion of great hearts.
– James Russell Lowell
Democracy is the form of government that gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
– James Russell Lowell
Children are God's Apostles, sent forth, day by day, to preach of love, and hope, and peace.
– James Russell Lowell
A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.
