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Truth is quite beyond the reach of satire. There is so brave a simplicity in her that she can no more be made ridiculous than an oak or a pine.

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
Reach
Beyond
Quite
Pine
Truth
Oaks
Made
Satire
Simplicity
Ridiculous
Brave

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Fate loves best such syllables as are sweet and sonorous on the tongue.
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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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Suddenly all the sky is hid As with the shutting of a lid, One by one great drops are falling Doubtful and slow, Down the pane they are crookedly crawling, And the wind breathes low Slowly the circles widen on the river, Widen and mingle, one and all Here and there the slenderer flowers shiver, Struck by an icy rain-drop’s fall.
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
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The one thing finished in this hasty world.
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Better one bite at forty, of truths bitter rind, than the hot wine that gushed from the vintage of twenty.
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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.
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Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide, In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side Some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight, And the choice goes by forever, ’twixt that darkness and that light.
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No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself.
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My gran'ther's rule was safer 'n 't is to crow: Don't never prophesy - onless ye know.
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Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how.
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The very gnarliest and hardest of hearts has some musical strings in it but they are tuned differently in every one of us.
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Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.
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Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
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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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The snow had begun in the gloaming, and busily all the night had been heaping field and highway with a silence deep and white.
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An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
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No sincere desire of doing good need make an enemy of a single human being that philanthropy has surely a flaw in it which cannot sympathize with the oppressor equally as with the oppressed.
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Ah, in this world, where every guiding thread Ends suddenly in the one sure centre, death, The visionary hand of Might-have-been Alone can fill Desire's cup to the brim!
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