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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.

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
Nice
Sweetheart
Eye
Enchanted
Peace
Shame
Everyone
Certainly
War
Hold
Country
Wise
Would
Enemy
Men
Eyes

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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God'll send the bill to you.
James Russell Lowell
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Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is, and what shifts we make to escape thinking. There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds.
James Russell Lowell
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A sneer is the weapon of the weak.
James Russell Lowell
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Like streams that keep a summer mind Snow-hid in Jenooary.
James Russell Lowell
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There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one, Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on.
James Russell Lowell
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Borrowed garments never keep one warm.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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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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It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is...
James Russell Lowell
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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
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Not but wut abstract war is horrid, I sign to thet with all my heart, But civilysation doos git forrid Sometimes, upon a powder-cart.
James Russell Lowell
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In the storm, like a prophet o'ermaddened, Thou singest and tossest thy branches Thy heart with the terror is gladdened, Thou forebodest the dread avalanches.... In the calm thou o'erstretchest the valleys With thine arms, as if blessings imploring, Like an old king led forth from his palace, When his people to battle are pouring.
James Russell Lowell
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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
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Fools, when their roof-tree falls, think it doomsday.
James Russell Lowell
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Blessed are they who have nothing to say and who cannot be persuaded to say it.
James Russell Lowell
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Freedom needs all her poets it is they Who give her aspirations wings, And to the wiser law of music sway Her wild imaginings.
James Russell Lowell
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My gran'ther's rule was safer 'n 't is to crow: Don't never prophesy - onless ye know.
James Russell Lowell
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Be He nowhere else, God is in all that liberates and lifts, in all that humbles, sweetens, and consoles.
James Russell Lowell