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To make the common marvelous is the test of genius.
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
Tests
Genius
Common
Make
Marvelous
Test
More quotes by James Russell Lowell
A weed is no more than a flower in disguise.
James Russell Lowell
Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.
James Russell Lowell
Truth always has a bewitching savor of newness in it, and novelty at the first taste recalls that original sweetness to the tongue but alas for him who would make the one a substitute for the other.
James Russell Lowell
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
Life is a sheet of paper white / Whereon each one of us may write / His word or two, and then comes night.
James Russell Lowell
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.
James Russell Lowell
Whoever can endure unmixed delight, whoever can tolerate music and painting and poetry all in one, whoever wishes to be rid of thought and to let the busy anvils of the brain be silent for a time, let him read in the Faery Queen.
James Russell Lowell
Good heavens, of what un costly material is our earthly happiness composed... if we only knew it. What incomes have we not had from a flower, and how unfailing are the dividends of the seasons.
James Russell Lowell
Fools, when their roof-tree falls, think it doomsday.
James Russell Lowell
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.
James Russell Lowell
One learns more metaphysics from a single temptation than from all the philosophers.
James Russell Lowell
The ash her purple drops forgivingly And sadly, breaking not the general hush The maple swamps glow like a sunset sea, Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze, Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer burns his brush.
James Russell Lowell
Our American republic will endure only as long as the ideas of the men who founded it continue dominant.
James Russell Lowell
Sentiment is intellectualized emotion emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals by the fancy.
James Russell Lowell
In life's small things be resolute and great To keep thy muscle trained Know'st thou when Fate Thy measure takes, or when she'll say to thee, I find thee worthy do this deed for me?
James Russell Lowell
No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself.
James Russell Lowell
The pressure of public opinion is like the pressure of the atmosphere you can't see it - but all the same, it is sixteen pounds to the square inch.
James Russell Lowell
True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean it is not memory but judgment.
James Russell Lowell
They are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three.
James Russell Lowell
The rich man's sons inherits cares The bank may break, the factory burn, A breath may burst his bubble shares, And soft, white hands could hardly earn A living that would serve his turn.
James Russell Lowell
