Quote

The wisest man could ask no more of fate Than to be simple, modest, manly, true, Safe from the many, honored by the few Nothing to court in Church, or World, or State, But inwardly in secret to be great.

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
World
Church
Modest
Simple
Simplicity
True
Court
States
Fate
Inwardly
Nothing
Safe
Manly
Many
Asks
Wisest
Great
Secret
Modesty
Men
State
Honored

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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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
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It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.
James Russell Lowell
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Life may be given in many ways, and loyalty to truth be sealed as bravely in the closet as the field.
James Russell Lowell
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Our seasons have no fixed returns, Without our will they come and go At noon our sudden summer burns, Ere sunset all is snow.
James Russell Lowell
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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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Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us.
James Russell Lowell
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It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dangerous, but the revolts of the intelligence.
James Russell Lowell
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The child is not mine as the first was, I cannot sing it to rest, I cannot lift it up fatherly And bliss it upon my breast Yet it lies in my little one's cradle And sits in my little one's chair, And the light of the heaven she's gone to Transfigures its golden hair.
James Russell Lowell
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It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is...
James Russell Lowell
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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
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The stiff rails were softened to swan's-down, and still fluttered down the snow.
James Russell Lowell
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The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accursed Man is more than Constitutions better rot beneath the sod, Than be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to God.
James Russell Lowell
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Not as all other women are Is she that to my soul is dear Her glorious fancies come from far, Beneath the silver evening star, And yet her heart is ever near.
James Russell Lowell
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Who's not sat tense before his own heart's curtain.
James Russell Lowell
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Incredulity robs us of many pleasures, and gives us nothing in return.
James Russell Lowell
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Life is constantly weighing us in very sensitive scales, and telling every one of us precisely what his real weight is to the last grain of dust.
James Russell Lowell
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The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment.
James Russell Lowell
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There is no self-delusion more fatal than that which makes the conscience dreamy with the anodyne of lofty sentiments, while the life is groveling and sensual
James Russell Lowell
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It is the vain endeavor to make ourselves what we are not that has strewn history with so many broken purposes and lives left in the rough.
James Russell Lowell
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It is the rooted instinct in men to admire what is better and more beautiful than themselves.
James Russell Lowell