Quotes from James Russell Lowell

To educate the intelligence is to expand the horizon of its wants and desires.

New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.

The greatest homage we can pay to truth, is to use it.

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.

Death is delightful. Death is dawn, The waking from a weary night Of fevers unto truth and light.

Life may be given in many ways, and loyalty to truth be sealed as bravely in the closet as the field.

Once to every person and nation come the moment to decide. In the conflict of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.

To put more faith in lies and hate than truth and love, is the true atheism.

Truth only needs to be for once spoken out; and there's such music in her, such strange rhythm, as makes men's memories her joyous slaves.

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.

Wut 's words to them whose faith an' truth On war's red techstone rang true metal; Who ventered life an' love an' youth For the gret prize o' death in battle?

Get but the truth once uttered, and 'tis like A star new-born that drops into its place And which, once circling in its placid round, Not all the tumult of the earth can shake.

In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.

Love lives on, and hath a power to bless when they who loved are hidden in the grave.

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.

Fate loves best such syllables as are sweet and sonorous on the tongue.

I love her with a love as still As a broad river's peaceful might, Which by high tower and lowly mill, Goes wandering at its own will, And yet does ever flow aright.

How I do love the earth. I feel it thrill under my feet. I feel somehow as if it were conscious of my love, as if something passed into my dancing blood from it.

Light is the symbol of truth.

Ez fer war, I call it murder,- There you hev it plain an' flat; I don't want to go no furder Than my Testyment fer that. . . . . . An' you 've gut to git up airly Ef you want to take in God.

True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgment.

There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.

There is no good arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.

What a sense of security in an old book which time has criticized for us!