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I would hardly change the sorrowful words of the poets for their glad ones. Tears dampen the strings of the lyre, but they grow the tensor for it, and ring even the clearer and more ravishingly.

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
Poet
Clearer
Ones
Ring
Grow
Strings
Grows
Poets
Words
Hardly
Change
Rings
Dampen
Even
Glad
Lyre
Would
Tears
Sorrowful

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Folks never understand the folks they hate.
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In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.
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Those who love are but one step from heaven.
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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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The soil out of which such men as he are made is good to be born on, good to live on, good to die for and to be buried in.
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Children are God's Apostles, sent forth, day by day, to preach of love, and hope, and peace.
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Not what we give, but what we share, for the gift without the giver is bare.
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Who speaks the truth stabs falsehood to the heart.
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A man is old when he can pass an apple orchard and not remember the stomachache.
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Aspiration sees only one side of every question possession many.
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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.
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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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Each day the world is born anew for him who takes it rightly.
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In all literary history there is no such figure as Dante, no such homogeneousness of life and works, such loyalty to ideas, such sublime irrecognition of the unessential.
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Ye come and go incessant we remain Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot, Of faith so nobly realized as this.
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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.
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Here come the hum the golden bees Underneath full blossomed trees, At once with glowing fruit and flowers crowned.
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Evil springs up, and flowers, and bears no seed, And feeds the green earth with its swift decay, Leaving it richer for the growth of truth.
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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.
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