James Russell Lowell

James Russell Lowell

Poet, Essayist

James Russell Lowell was an American poet and essayist known for his advocacy of social reform and his influential work, 'The Biglow Papers.'

Men Heart Literature Life Truth Thinking
Born
February 22, 1819
Died
August 12, 1891
Quotes
453
Rank
#467

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James Russell Lowell quotes (page 22 of 23)

453 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.

James Russell Lowell Poet, Essayist
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"Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, We are happy now because God so wills it; No matter how barren the past may have been, 'T is enough for us now that the leaves are green; We sit in the warm shade and feel right well How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell... The breeze comes whispering in our ear, That dandelions are blossoming near... Every thing is upward striving; 'T is as easy now for the heart to be true As for grass to be green or skies to be blue, - 'T is the natural way of living."

Summer Heart Past
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"In the storm, like a prophet o'ermaddened, Thou singest and tossest thy branches; Thy heart with the terror is gladdened, Thou forebodest the dread avalanches.... In the calm thou o'erstretchest the valleys With thine arms, as if blessings imploring, Like an old king led forth from his palace, When his people to battle are pouring."

Kings Heart Blessing
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"Certainly it is no shame to a man that he should be as nice about his country as his sweetheart, yet it would not be wise to hold everyone an enemy who could not see her with our own enchanted eyes."

Wise Country Peace
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"Suddenly all the sky is hid As with the shutting of a lid, One by one great drops are falling Doubtful and slow, Down the pane they are crookedly crawling, And the wind breathes low; Slowly the circles widen on the river, Widen and mingle, one and all; Here and there the slenderer flowers shiver, Struck by an icy rain-drop’s fall."

Rain Flower Fall
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"Now on the hills I hear the thunder mutter... Nearer and nearer rolls the thunder-clap, - You can hear the quick heart of the tempest beat.... Look! look! that livid flash! And instantly follows the rattling thunder, As if some cloud-crag, split asunder, Fell, splintering with a ruinous crash, On the Earth, which crouches in silence under; And now a solid gray wall of rain Shuts off the landscape, mile by mile."

Wall Rain Heart
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"Hush! Still as death, The tempest holds his breath As from a sudden will; The rain stops short, but from the eaves You see it drop, and hear it from the leaves, All is so bodingly still."

Rain Weather Tempest
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"The pale and quiet moon Makes her calm forehead bare, And the last fragments of the storm, Like shattered rigging from a fight at sea, Silent and few, are drifting over me."

Fighting Moon Sea
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"In the earliest ages science was poetry, as in the later poetry has become science."

Science Age Latter
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"Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face."

Men Race Elderly
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"The soil out of which such men as he are made is good to be born on, good to live on, good to die for and to be buried in."

Men Soil Born
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"The opening of the first grammar school was the opening of the first trench against monopoly in Church and State."

Education School Church
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"The true historical genius, to our thinking, is that which can see the nobler meaning of events that are near him, as the true poet is he who detects the divine in the casual; and we somewhat suspect the depth of his insight into the past who cannot recognize the godlike of to-day under that disguise in which it always visits us."

Thinking Past Historical
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"He gives only the worthless gold who gives from a sense of duty."

Giving Gold Duty
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"Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just; Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified."

Truth Men Bravery
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"Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan Repeating us by rote: For him her Old World moulds aside she threw And, choosing sweet clay from the breast Of the unexhausted West, With stuff untainted shaped a hero new."

Sweet Hero Men
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"In all literary history there is no such figure as Dante, no such homogeneousness of life and works, such loyalty to ideas, such sublime irrecognition of the unessential."

Loyalty Ideas Sublime
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"[B]ut in literature, it should be remembered, a thing always becomes his at last who says it best, and thus makes it his own."

Literature Lasts Should
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"The sentimentalist does not think of what he does so much as of what the world will think of what he does."

Thinking Doe World
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"Though old the thought and oft exprest, Tis his at last who says it best."

Writing Lasts
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"It seems to me that the bane of our country is a profession of faith either with no basis of real belief, or with no proper examination of the grounds on which the creed is supposed to rest."

Country Real Atheism
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