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

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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The devil loves nothing better than the intolerance of reformers.
James Russell Lowell
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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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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.
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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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The greatest homage we can pay to truth, is to use it.
James Russell Lowell
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The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers is that which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience.
James Russell Lowell
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A stray hair, by its continued irritation, may give more annoyance than a smart blow.
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Life is a sheet of paper white / Whereon each one of us may write / His word or two, and then comes night.
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Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave.
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Men have their intellectual ancestry, and the likeness of some one of them is forever unexpectedly flashing out in the features of a descendant, it may be after a gap of several centuries. In the parliament of the present every man represents a constituency of the past.
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The sentimentalist does not think of what he does so much as of what the world will think of what he does.
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Not as all other women are Is she that to my soul is dear Her glorious fancies come from far, Beneath the silver evening star, And yet her heart is ever near.
James Russell Lowell
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To educate the intelligence is to expand the horizon of its wants and desires.
James Russell Lowell
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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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Not but wut abstract war is horrid, I sign to thet with all my heart, But civilysation doos git forrid Sometimes, upon a powder-cart.
James Russell Lowell
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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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Who is it needs such flawless shafts as fate? What archer of his arrows is so choice, or hits the white so surely?
James Russell Lowell
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What a man pays for bread and butter is worth its market value, and no more. What he pays for love's sake is gold indeed, which has a lure for angels' eyes, and rings well upon God's touchstone.
James Russell Lowell
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One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.
James Russell Lowell
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Incredulity robs us of many pleasures, and gives us nothing in return.
James Russell Lowell