Quote

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,- Yet that scaffold sways the Future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

James Russell Lowell

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

James Russell Lowell
Age: 72 †
Born: 1819
Born: February 22
Died: 1891
Died: August 12
Diplomat
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Poet
Writer
Cambridge
Massachusetts
Behind
Throne
Forever
Thrones
Within
Unknown
Wrong
Keeping
Future
Shadow
Truth
Watches
Watch
Sways
Behinds
Scaffold

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

Image
To win the secret of a weed's plain heart.
James Russell Lowell
Image
God'll send the bill to you.
James Russell Lowell
Image
I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.
James Russell Lowell
Image
A nature wise With finding in itself the types of all, With watching from the dim verge of the time What things to be are visible in the gleams Thrown forward on them from the luminous past, Wise with the history of its own frail heart, With reverence and sorrow, and with love, Broad as the world, for freedom and for man.
James Russell Lowell
Image
That pernicious sentiment, Our country, right or wrong.
James Russell Lowell
Image
Life may be given in many ways, and loyalty to truth be sealed as bravely in the closet as the field.
James Russell Lowell
Image
Not what we give, but what we share, for the gift without the giver is bare.
James Russell Lowell
Image
There is only one thing better than tradition and that is the original and eternal life out of which all tradition takes its rise.
James Russell Lowell
Image
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
Image
You've gut to git up airly Ef you want to take in God.
James Russell Lowell
Image
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
Image
It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dangerous, but the revolts of the intelligence.
James Russell Lowell
Image
There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one, Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on.
James Russell Lowell
Image
Reading Chaucer is like brushing through the dewy grass at sunrise.
James Russell Lowell
Image
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 age’s drowsy blood Still shouts the inspiring sea.
James Russell Lowell
Image
Our American republic will endure only as long as the ideas of the men who founded it continue dominant.
James Russell Lowell
Image
All thoughtful men are solitary and original in themselves.
James Russell Lowell
Image
What a man pays for bread and butter is worth its market value, and no more. What he pays for love's sake is gold indeed, which has a lure for angels' eyes, and rings well upon God's touchstone.
James Russell Lowell
Image
There is surely room for yet another schoolmaster when a score of seers advertise themselves in Boston newspapers.
James Russell Lowell
Image
The snow had begun in the gloaming, and busily all the night had been heaping field and highway with a silence deep and white.
James Russell Lowell