Children are God’s apostles, sent forth, day by day, to preach of love, and hope and peace.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Children
No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Being Ourselves
I would hardly change the sorrowful words of the poets for their glad ones.—Tears dampen the strings of the lyre, but they grow the more tender for it, and ring even the clearer and more ravishingly for it.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Tears
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Literature, Reading, Books
A sneer is the weapon of the weak. Like other devil’s weapons, it is always cunningly ready to our hand, and there is more poison in the handle than in the point.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Criticism, Critics
The idol is the measure of the worshipper.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: God
Be NOBLE! and the nobleness that lies
In other men, sleeping, but never dead,
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.
—James Russell Lowell
A weed is no more than a flower in disguise, Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Flowers, Gardening
Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.
—James Russell Lowell
I don’t believe in principle, but I do in interest.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Curiosity
Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this: That you are dreadfully like other people.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Equality
In creating, the only hard thing is to begin: a grass-blade’s no easier to make than an oak.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Creation
The eye is the notebook of the poet.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Poetry
I who still pray at morning and at eve
Thrice in my life perhaps have truly prayed,
Thrice stirred below conscious self
Have felt that perfect disenthrallinent which is God.
—James Russell Lowell
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
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
Topics: Poetry
Fashion must be forever new, or she becomes insipid.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Fashion
Darkness is strong, and so is Sin, But surely God endures forever.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: God, Faith, Divinity
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
Topics: Gratitude, Blessings
Imagination, where it is truly creative, is a faculty, not a quality; its seat is in the higher reason, and it is efficient only as the servant of the will.—Imagination, as too often understood, is mere fantasy—the image-making power, common to all who have the gift of dreams.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Imagination
An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Reason
Reputation is in itself only a farthing-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
Topics: Self-Discovery, Reputation
Stories now, to suit a public taste, must be half epigram, half pleasant vice.
—James Russell Lowell
Aspiration sees only one side of every question; possession many
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Aspirations
Every person born into this world their work is born with them.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Work
Some scrap of a childish song hath often been a truer alms than all the benevolent societies could give. This is the best missionary, knowing when she may knock at the door of the most curmudgeonly hearts, without being turned away unheard. For poesy is love’s chosen apostle, and the very almoner of God. She is the home of the outcast, and the wealth of the needy.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Poetry
To make the common marvelous is the test of genius.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Genius
But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet. Lessen like sound of friends departing feet; And death is beautiful as feet of friend. Coming with welcome at our journey’s end.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Dying, Death
The code of society is stronger with some persons than that of Sinai; and many a man who would not scruple to thrust his fingers in his neighbor’s pocket, would forego peas rather than use his knife as a shovel.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Society
Freedom is the only law which genius knows.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Freedom
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich American Writer
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow American Poet
- Dorothy Parker American Humorist, Journalist
- Walt Whitman American Poet
- Nathaniel Parker Willis American Poet, Playwright
- John Jay Chapman American Writer
- Henry David Thoreau American Philosopher
- John Greenleaf Whittier American Poet, Abolitionist
- Robert Frost American Poet
- John Ciardi American Poet
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