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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

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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
Seed
Flower
Decay
Growth
Flowers
Evil
Seeds
Feeds
Truth
Leaving
Swift
Earth
Bears
Springs
Green
Richer
Wickedness
Spring

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The New World's sons from England's breast we drew Such milk as bids remember whence we came, Proud of her past wherefrom our future grew, This window we inscribe with Raleigh's fame.
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Borrowed garments never keep one warm.
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Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.
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He who keeps his faith only, cannot be discrowned.
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Endurance is the crowning quality.
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No mud can soil us but the mud we throw.
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If youth be a defect, it is one that we outgrow only too soon.
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It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.
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Where Church and State are habitually associated, it is natural that minds, even of a high order, should unconsciously come to regard religion as only a subtler mode of police.
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No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself.
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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.
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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.
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The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment.
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Blessed are they who have nothing to say and who cannot be persuaded to say it.
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Who's not sat tense before his own heart's curtain.
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Ah, in this world, where every guiding thread Ends suddenly in the one sure centre, death, The visionary hand of Might-have-been Alone can fill Desire's cup to the brim!
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A poet must need be before his own age, to be even with posterity
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The future works out great men's destinies The present is enough for common souls, Who, never looking forward, are indeed Mere clay wherein the footprints of their age Are petrified forever.
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He gives us the very quintessence of perception,-the clearly crystalized precipitation of all that is most precious in the ferment of impression after the impertinent and obtrusive particulars have evaporated from the memory.
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In life's small things be resolute and great To keep thy muscle trained Know'st thou when Fate Thy measure takes, or when she'll say to thee, I find thee worthy do this deed for me?
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