James Russell Lowell (1819–91) was an American poet, critic, essayist, editor, and diplomat. A celebrated man of letters in his day, he is significant for expanding public interest in literature in 19th-century America.
Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Lowell got a law degree from Harvard University. He followed Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as professor of French and Spanish at Harvard in 1855, and was American Minister in Spain 1877–80, and England, 1880–85. Lowell served as editor of the Atlantic Monthly and co-editor of the North American Review.
Lowell’s works include several volumes of verse, the satirical Biglow Papers (1848, 67,) A Fable for Critics (1848,) and memorial odes after the American Civil War. His volumes of essays include Fireside Travels (1864,) Among My Books (1870,) and My Study Window (1871.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by 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
Topics: Discipline
The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change; then let it come.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Change
Incredulity robs us of many pleasures, and gives us nothing in return.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Belief
As one lamp lights another, nor grows less,
So nobleness enkindleth nobleness.
—James Russell Lowell
Tyranny is always weakness.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Tyranny
Every person born into this world their work is born with them.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Work
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Reading, Books, Literature
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide … And the choice goes by forever ‘twixt that darkness and that light.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: The Present, Decisions
Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Self-Control, Control
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
Humbleness is always grace; always dignity.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Humility
It is singular how impatient men are with overpraise of others, how patient of overpraise of themselves; and yet the one does them no injury, while the other may be their ruin.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Praise
One day, with life and heart, is more than time enough to find a world.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Persistence
The devil loves nothing better than the intolerance of reformers, and dreads nothing so much as their charity and patience.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Hypocrisy
Good luck is the willing handmaid of a upright and energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Luck
They talk about their Pilgrim blood, their birthright high and holy! a mountain-stream that ends in mud thinks is melancholy.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Ancestors, Family, Ancestry
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
Topics: Mediocrity
There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Water
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
Topics: Belief, Faith
For the whole year long I see
All the wonders of faithful Nature
Still worked for the love of me;
Winds wander, and dews drip earthward,
Rain falls, suns rise and set,
Earth whirls, and all but to prosper
A poor little violet.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Nature
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
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
O visionary world, condition strange, Where naught abiding is but only change.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Change
New occasions teach new duties.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Duty
Fortune is the rod of the weak, and the staff of the brave.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Luck, Fortune
Fate loves the fearless.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Fear, Courage
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
Topics: Arguments, Argument, Acceptance
The surest plan to make a man is, think him so.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Praise
Fashion must be forever new, or she becomes insipid.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Fashion
Life is the jailer, death the angel sent to draw the unwilling bolts and set us free.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Death, Dying
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
It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Genius
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
What a sense of security in an old book which time has criticized for us.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Reading, Literature, Books
Talent is that which is in a man’s power; genius is that in whose power a man is.
—James Russell Lowell
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
No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself.
—James Russell Lowell
Topics: Being Ourselves
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
The quiet tenderness of Chaucer—Where you almost seem to hear the hot tears falling, and the simple choking words sobbed out.
—James Russell Lowell
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