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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

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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
Always
Towers
Things
Longing
Seem
Past
Beckons
Seems
Leans
Back
Fairer
Look
Inaccessible
Looks
Tower

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They talk about their Pilgrim blood, their birthright high and holy! a mountain-stream that ends in mud thinks is melancholy.
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But better far it is to speak One simple word, which now and then Shall waken their free nature in the weak And friendless sons of men.
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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.
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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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One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.
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True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean it is not memory but judgment.
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That pernicious sentiment, Our country, right or wrong.
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A weed is no more than a flower in disguise, Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes.
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Praise follows truth afar off, and only overtakes her at the grave plausibility clings to her skirts and holds her back till then
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Who is it needs such flawless shafts as fate? What archer of his arrows is so choice, or hits the white so surely?
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Good heavens, of what un costly material is our earthly happiness composed... if we only knew it. What incomes have we not had from a flower, and how unfailing are the dividends of the seasons.
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Whom the heart of man shuts out, Sometimes the heart of God takes in, And fences them all round about With silence mid the worlds loud din.
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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.
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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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Did man e'er live Saw priest or woman yet forgive?
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Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide.
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The flowers or weeds that spring up tomorrow are in the seeds we sow today. The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.
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Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving.
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There is no work of genius which has not been the delight of mankind, no word of genius to which the human heart and soul have not sooner or later responded.
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Whoever can endure unmixed delight, whoever can tolerate music and painting and poetry all in one, whoever wishes to be rid of thought and to let the busy anvils of the brain be silent for a time, let him read in the Faery Queen.
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