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Not failure, but low aim, is crime.
James Russell Lowell
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James Russell Lowell
Age: 72 †
Born: 1819
Born: February 22
Died: 1891
Died: August 12
Diplomat
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Poet
Writer
Cambridge
Massachusetts
Lows
Ambition
Failure
Failing
Crime
Fear
Inspirational
Aim
Educational
More quotes by James Russell Lowell
The English Puritans pulled down church and state to rebuild Zion on the ruins, and all the while it was not Zion, but America, they were building.
James Russell Lowell
Men! whose boast it is that ye Come of fathers brave and free, If there breathe on earth a slave, Are ye truly free and brave?
James Russell Lowell
If youth be a defect, it is one that we outgrow only too soon.
James Russell Lowell
Good luck is the willing handmaid of upright, energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.
James Russell Lowell
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
Who speaks the truth stabs falsehood to the heart.
James Russell Lowell
Evil springs up, and flowers, and bears no seed, And feeds the green earth with its swift decay, Leaving it richer for the growth of truth.
James Russell Lowell
Over our manhood bend the skies Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies With our faint hearts the mountain strives, Its arms outstretched, the druid wood Waits with its benedicite And to our ages drowsy blood Still shouts the inspiring sea.
James Russell Lowell
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.
James Russell Lowell
If the devil take a less hateful shape to us than to our fathers, he is as busy with us as with them.
James Russell Lowell
The sentimentalist does not think of what he does so much as of what the world will think of what he does.
James Russell Lowell
Large charity doth never soil, but only whitens soft white hands.
James Russell Lowell
Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, First pledge of blithesome May, Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold.
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
A great part of human suffering has its root in the nature of man, and not in that of his institutions.
James Russell Lowell
Old gold has a civilizing virtue which new gold must grow old to be capable of secreting.
James Russell Lowell
What men call luck Is the prerogative of valiant souls, The fealty life pays its rightful kings.
James Russell Lowell
Men have their intellectual ancestry, and the likeness of some one of them is forever unexpectedly flashing out in the features of a descendant, it may be after a gap of several centuries. In the parliament of the present every man represents a constituency of the past.
James Russell Lowell
To educate the intelligence is to expand the horizon of its wants and desires.
James Russell Lowell
Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime. Not failure, but low aim is crime.
James Russell Lowell
