"Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind."
"To me it seems not unreasonable to find a re-enforcement of optimism, a renewal of courage and hope, in the modern theory that man has mounted to what he is from the lowest step of potentiality, through toilsome grades of ever-expanding existence, even thought it have been by a spiral stairway, mainly dark or dusty, with loop-holes at long intervals only, and these granting but a narrow and one-sided view."
3 likes
Source: James Russell Lowell (1871). “The poetical works of James Russell Lowell”, p.379
About the author
Same author
More quotes by James Russell Lowell
"Fate loves the fearless."
"The devil loves nothing better than the intolerance of reformers."
"What visionary tints the year puts on, When falling leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, tremulous hair!"
"All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action."
"One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning."