Quotes from James Russell Lowell

He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.

Every person born into this world their work is born with them.

Democracy is the form of government that gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.

Aspiration sees only one side of every question; possession many.

Fashion being the art of those who must purchase notice at some cheaper rate than that of being beautiful, loves to do rash and extravagant things. She must be forever new, or she becomes insipid.

There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business.

Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint.

Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.

What means this glory round our feet, The Magi mused, "more bright than morn!" And voices chanted clear and sweet, "To-day the Prince of Peace is born.

We look at death through the cheap-glazed windows of the flesh, and believe him the monster which the flawed and cracked glass represents him.

Blessed are they that have nothing to say, and who cannot be persuaded to say it

The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment.

There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.

It was in making education not only common to all, but in some sense compulsory on all, that the destiny of the free republics of America was practically settled.

The opening of the first grammar school was the opening of the first trench against monopoly in Church and State.

True freedom is to share All the chains our brothers wear, And, with heart and hand, to be Earnest to make others free!

One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.

O thou, whose days are yet all spring, Faith, blighted once, is past retrieving; Experience is a dumb, dead thing; The victory's in believing.

He who keeps his faith only, cannot be discrowned.

It seems to me that the bane of our country is a profession of faith either with no basis of real belief, or with no proper examination of the grounds on which the creed is supposed to rest.

Ye come and go incessant; we remain Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past; Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot, Of faith so nobly realized as this.

Faith is that which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience.

The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weather is that which is woven of conviction.

If the devil take a less hateful shape to us than to our fathers, he is as busy with us as with them.