Quotes from James Russell Lowell

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.

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.

The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change... [Truth's] mirror is turned forward, to reflect The promise of the future, not the past.

Reading enables us to see with the keenest eyes, to hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time.

And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days.

Time is, after all, the greatest of poets; and the sons of Memory stand a better chance of being the heirs of Fame.

Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime. Not failure, but low aim is crime.

If youth be a defect, it is one that we outgrow only too soon.

The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change.

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.

All that hath been majestical In life or death, since time began, Is native in the simple heart of all, The angel heat of man.

To genius life never grows commonplace.

If one waits for the right time to come before writing, the right time never comes.

God is the only being who has time enough; but a prudent man, who knows how to seize occasion, can commonly make a shift to find as much as he needs.

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?"

True love is but a humble, low born thing, And hath its food served up in earthenware; It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand, Through the every-dayness of this workday world.

That love for one, from which there doth not spring Wide love for all, is but a worthless thing.

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.

A wise man travels to discover himself.

I willingly confess to so great a partiality for trees as tempts me to respect a man in exact proportion to his respect for them.

Truth forever on the scaffold. Wrong forever on the throne.

There is something magnificent in having a country to love.

A weed is no more than a flower in disguise, Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes.

Those who love are but one step from heaven.