JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL QUOTES IV

American poet & diplomat (1819-1891)

But all God's angels come to us disguised: sorrow and sickness, poverty and death, one after other lift their frowning masks, and we behold the Seraph's face beneath, all radiant with the glory and the calm of having looked upon the front of God.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"On the Death of a Friend's Child"

Tags: angels


Analysis is carried into everything. Even Deity is subjected to chemical tests.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

The Round Table


Love called, and I could not linger,
But sought the forbidden tryst,
As music follows the finger
Of the dreaming lutanist.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"Telepathy"

Tags: love


Children are God's Apostles, day by day
Sent forth to preach of love, and hope, and peace.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"The Death of a Friend's Child"

Tags: children


I have hinted that what people are afraid of in democracy is less the thing itself than what they conceive to be its necessary adjuncts and consequences. It is supposed to reduce all mankind to a dead level of mediocrity in character and culture, to vulgarize men's conceptions of life, and therefore their code of morals, manners, and conduct -- to endanger the rights of property and possession. But I believe that the real gravamen of the charges lies in the habit it has of making itself generally disagreeable by asking the Powers that Be at the most inconvenient moment whether they are the powers that ought to be. If the powers that be are in a condition to give a satisfactory answer to this inevitable question, they need feel in no way discomfited by it.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

On Democracy

Tags: democracy


Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how;
Everything is happy now.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"The Vision of Sir Launfal"

Tags: joy


Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Democracy and Addresses

Tags: misfortune


The mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts, and dwell a hermit anywhere.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Of a Certain Condescension in Foreigners

Tags: mind


From lower to the higher next,
Not to the top, is Nature's text;
And embryo Good, to reach full stature,
Absorbs the Evil in its nature.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Festina Lente, Moral


These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred,
Each softly lucent as a rounded moon;
The diver Omar plucked them from their bed,
Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

In a Copy of Omar Khayyam


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

"Keats", Literary Essays

Tags: reputation


Aspiration sees only one side of every question; possession, many.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Among my Books, New England Two Centuries Ago

Tags: possessions


Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Rousseau and the Sentimentalists

Tags: genius


Ye come and go incessant; we remain
Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past;
Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot,
Of faith so nobly realized as this.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

The Cathedral


Here shall a realm rise
Mighty in manhood;
Justice and Mercy
Here set a stronghold
Safe without spear.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"The Voyage to Vinland"


'Tis easy now for the heart to be true
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue--
'Tis the natural way of living.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"The Vision of Sir Launfal"


Sincerity is impossible, unless it pervade the whole being, and the pretense of it saps the very foundation of character.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Lectures on English Poets

Tags: sincerity


Keats longed for fame, but longed above all to deserve it.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"Keats", Literary Essays

Tags: John Keats


Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

A Few Bits of Roman Mosaic

Tags: past


Not what we give, but what we share,
For the gift without the giver is bare.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"The Vision of Sir Launfal"

Tags: giving