Quote

To make the common marvelous is the test of genius.

James Russell Lowell

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

James Russell Lowell
Age: 72 †
Born: 1819
Born: February 22
Died: 1891
Died: August 12
Diplomat
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Poet
Writer
Cambridge
Massachusetts
Tests
Genius
Common
Make
Marvelous
Test

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

Image
The victory's in believing.
James Russell Lowell
Image
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.
James Russell Lowell
Image
It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.
James Russell Lowell
Image
Fools, when their roof-tree falls, think it doomsday.
James Russell Lowell
Image
Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
James Russell Lowell
Image
New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.
James Russell Lowell
Image
For only by unlearning Wisdom comes.
James Russell Lowell
Image
Nature fits all her children with something to do, he who would write and can't write, can surely review.
James Russell Lowell
Image
Not failure, but low aim, is crime.
James Russell Lowell
Image
Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold- bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief.
James Russell Lowell
Image
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
Image
Ah, men do not know how much strength is in poise, That he goes the farthest who goes far enough.
James Russell Lowell
Image
Better one bite at forty, of truths bitter rind, than the hot wine that gushed from the vintage of twenty.
James Russell Lowell
Image
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
Image
The fireflies o'er the meadow In pulses come and go.
James Russell Lowell
Image
In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.
James Russell Lowell
Image
Comparative criticism teaches us that moral and aesthetic defects are more nearly related than is commonly supposed.
James Russell Lowell
Image
Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us.
James Russell Lowell
Image
What visionary tints the year puts on, When falling leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, tremulous hair!
James Russell Lowell
Image
Poetry is something to make us wiser and better, by continually revealing those types of beauty and truth, which God has set in all men's souls.
James Russell Lowell