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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
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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
Much
Reader
Easier
Quite
Superficial
Class
Readers
Practice
Judge
Common
Determine
Book
Critics
Matter
Judging
More quotes by James Russell Lowell
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
Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified.
James Russell Lowell
We look at death through the cheap-glazed windows of the flesh, and believe him the monster which the flawed and cracked glass represents him.
James Russell Lowell
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
It is only by instigation of the wrongs of men that what are called the Rights of Man become turbulent and dangerous.
James Russell Lowell
True freedom is to share All the chains our brothers wear, And, with heart and hand, to be Earnest to make others free!
James Russell Lowell
Fools, when their roof-tree falls, think it doomsday.
James Russell Lowell
He gives us the very quintessence of perception,-the clearly crystalized precipitation of all that is most precious in the ferment of impression after the impertinent and obtrusive particulars have evaporated from the memory.
James Russell Lowell
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
How little inventiveness there is in man, Grave copier of copies.
James Russell Lowell
Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold- bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief.
James Russell Lowell
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
Not what we give, but what we share, for the gift without the giver is bare.
James Russell Lowell
Democracy is that form of society, no matter what its political classification, in which every man has a chance and knows that he has it.
James Russell Lowell
Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave.
James Russell Lowell
We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage.
James Russell Lowell
God is not dumb, that he should speak no more If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor.
James Russell Lowell
Fate loves best such syllables as are sweet and sonorous on the tongue.
James Russell Lowell
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
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.
James Russell Lowell