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A sneer is the weapon of the weak.
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
Weak
Sneer
Weapon
Critics
Criticism
Weapons
More quotes by James Russell Lowell
Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.
James Russell Lowell
Democracy is nothing more than an experiment in government, more likely to succeed in a new soil, but likely to be tried in all soils, which must stand or fall on its own merits as others have done before it. For there is no trick of perpetual motion in politics any more than in mechanics.
James Russell Lowell
To make the common marvelous is the test of genius.
James Russell Lowell
I tell ye wut, my judgment is you're pooty sure to fail, Ez long 'z the head keeps turnin' back for counsel to the the tail.
James Russell Lowell
Those who love are but one step from heaven.
James Russell Lowell
Never did Poesy appear So full of heaven to me, as when I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear To the lives of coarsest men.
James Russell Lowell
In the earliest ages science was poetry, as in the later poetry has become science.
James Russell Lowell
The ash her purple drops forgivingly And sadly, breaking not the general hush The maple swamps glow like a sunset sea, Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze, Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer burns his brush.
James Russell Lowell
It is curious for one who studies the action and reaction of national literature on each other, to see the humor of Swift and Sterne and Fielding, after filtering through Richter, reappear in Carlyle with a tinge of Germanism that makes it novel, alien, or even displeasing, as the case may be, to the English mind.
James Russell Lowell
An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
James Russell Lowell
Aspiration sees only one side of every question possession many.
James Russell Lowell
Borrowed garments never keep one warm.
James Russell Lowell
Not what we give, but what we share, for the gift without the giver is bare.
James Russell Lowell
Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof.
James Russell Lowell
As one lamp lights another, nor grows less,So nobleness enkindleth nobleness.
James Russell Lowell
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.
James Russell Lowell
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.
James Russell Lowell
Reading Chaucer is like brushing through the dewy grass at sunrise.
James Russell Lowell
He who keeps his faith only, cannot be discrowned.
James Russell Lowell
Truth always has a bewitching savor of newness in it, and novelty at the first taste recalls that original sweetness to the tongue but alas for him who would make the one a substitute for the other.
James Russell Lowell
