Quote

There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds.

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
Dread
Minds
Alone
Left
Much
Mind
Bore
Bores

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

Image
It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.
James Russell Lowell
Image
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
Image
The dandelions and buttercups gild all the lawn: the drowsy bee stumbles among the clover tops, and summer sweetens all to me.
James Russell Lowell
Image
The fireflies o'er the meadow In pulses come and go.
James Russell Lowell
Image
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
Image
The very gnarliest and hardest of hearts has some musical strings in it but they are tuned differently in every one of us.
James Russell Lowell
Image
No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself.
James Russell Lowell
Image
It is only the intellect that can be thoroughly and hideously wicked. It can forget everything in the attainment of its ends. The heart recoils in its retired some drops of childhood's dew still linger, defying manhood's fiery noon.
James Russell Lowell
Image
To educate the intelligence is to expand the horizon of its wants and desires.
James Russell Lowell
Image
The devil loves nothing better than the intolerance of reformers.
James Russell Lowell
Image
It was in making education not only common to all, but in some sense compulsory on all, that the destiny of the free republics of America was practically settled.
James Russell Lowell
Image
Communism means barbarism.
James Russell Lowell
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Life is a sheet of paper white / Whereon each one of us may write / His word or two, and then comes night.
James Russell Lowell
Image
Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.
James Russell Lowell
Image
The first lesson of life is to burn our own smoke that is, not to inflict on outsiders our personal sorrows and petty morbidness, not to keep thinking of ourselves as exceptional cases.
James Russell Lowell
Image
A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.
James Russell Lowell
Image
It is by presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of man is tested.
James Russell Lowell
Image
It is quite too common a practice, both in readers and the more superficial class of critics, to judge a book by what it is not, a matter much easier to determine than what it is.
James Russell Lowell