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But better far it is to speak One simple word, which now and then Shall waken their free nature in the weak And friendless sons of men.

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
Speak
Sons
Nature
Sympathy
Better
Son
Men
Weak
Shall
Word
Simple
Waken
Free
Friendless

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Comparative criticism teaches us that moral and aesthetic defects are more nearly related than is commonly supposed.
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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.
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The dandelions and buttercups gild all the lawn: the drowsy bee stumbles among the clover tops, and summer sweetens all to me.
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While tenderness of feeling and susceptibility to generous emotions are accidents of temperament, goodness is an achievement of the will and a quality of the life.
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To be young is surely the best, if the most precarious, gift of life.
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It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.
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I don't believe in principle, but I do in interest.
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And I honor the man who is willing to sink half his present repute for the freedom to think, and, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t' other half for the freedom to speak.
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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.
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Stories now, to suit a public taste, must be half epigram, half pleasant vice.
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The story of any one man's real experience finds its startling parallel in that of every one of us.
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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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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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A poet must need be before his own age, to be even with posterity
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How I do love the earth. I feel it thrill under my feet. I feel somehow as if it were conscious of my love, as if something passed into my dancing blood from it.
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Fools, when their roof-tree falls, think it doomsday.
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Praise follows truth afar off, and only overtakes her at the grave plausibility clings to her skirts and holds her back till then
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Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, and cries reproachful: Was it then my praise, and not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth I claim of thee the promise of thy youth.
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Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do that day, which must be done, whether you like it or not.
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I who still pray at morning and at eve Thrice in my life perhaps have truly prayed, Thrice stirred below conscious self Have felt that perfect disenthrallment which is God.
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