Quote

The first lesson of life is to burn our own smoke that is, not to inflict on outsiders our personal sorrows and petty morbidness, not to keep thinking of ourselves as exceptional cases.

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
Life
Lessons
Inflict
Sorrow
Sorrows
Cases
Outsiders
Personal
Exceptional
Keep
Petty
Firsts
Burn
First
Lesson
Thinking
Smoke

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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Stories now, to suit a public taste, must be half epigram, half pleasant vice.
James Russell Lowell
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But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet. Lessen like sound of friends departing feet And death is beautiful as feet of friend. Coming with welcome at our journey's end.
James Russell Lowell
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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
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The only conclusive evidence of a man's sincerity is that he gives himself for a principle. Words, money, all things else, are comparatively easy to give away but when a man makes a gift of his daily life and practice, it is plain that the truth, whatever it may be, has taken possession of him.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
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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A wise man travels to discover himself.
James Russell Lowell
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Did man e'er live Saw priest or woman yet forgive?
James Russell Lowell
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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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His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, But hern went pity-Zekle.
James Russell Lowell
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That love for one, from which there doth not spring Wide love for all, is but a worthless thing.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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If the devil take a less hateful shape to us than to our fathers, he is as busy with us as with them.
James Russell Lowell
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Not what we give, but what we share, for the gift without the giver is bare.
James Russell Lowell
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It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dangerous, but the revolts of the intelligence.
James Russell Lowell
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Not suffering, but faint heart, is worst of woes.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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I don't believe in principle, but I do in interest.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
James Russell Lowell