Quotes from James Russell Lowell

A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.

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

The devil loves nothing better than the intolerance of reformers.

Ye who, passing graves by night, Glance not to the left nor right, Lest a spirit should arise, Cold and white, to freeze your eyes...

Against the windows the storm comes dashing, Through tattered foliage the hail tears crashing, The blue lightning flashes, The rapid hail clashes... The thunder is rumbling And crashing and crumbling...

Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed.

We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage.

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.

Suddenly all the sky is hid As with the shutting of a lid, One by one great drops are falling Doubtful and slow, Down the pane they are crookedly crawling, And the wind breathes low; Slowly the circles widen on the river, Widen and mingle, one and all; Here and there the slenderer flowers shiver, Struck by an icy rain-drop's fall.

The pale and quiet moon Makes her calm forehead bare, And the last fragments of the storm, Like shattered rigging from a fight at sea, Silent and few, are drifting over me.

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.

Not failure, but low aim, is crime.

In the storm, like a prophet o'ermaddened, Thou singest and tossest thy branches; Thy heart with the terror is gladdened, Thou forebodest the dread avalanches.... In the calm thou o'erstretchest the valleys With thine arms, as if blessings imploring, Like an old king led forth from his palace, When his people to battle are pouring...

...Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees Bending to counterfeit a breeze...

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

There is no price set on the lavish summer, And June may be had by the poorest comer.

Over our manhood bend the skies; Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies; With our faint hearts the mountain strives, Its arms outstretched, the druid wood Waits with its benedicite And to our age's drowsy blood Still shouts the inspiring sea.

My soul is not a palace of the past...

Again, now, now, again Plashes the rain in heavy gouts, The crinkled lightning Seems ever brightening... And loud and long Again the thunder shouts His battle-song,— One quivering flash, One wildering crash, Followed by silence dead and dull, As if the cloud, let go, Leapt bodily below To whelm the earth in one mad overthrow, And then a total lull...

Hush! Still as death, The tempest holds his breath As from a sudden will; The rain stops short, but from the eaves You see it drop, and hear it from the leaves, All is so bodingly still...

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

Ef you want peace, the thing you've gut tu duIs jes' to show you're up to fightin', tu.

You've gut to git up airlyEf you want to take in God.

[B]ut in literature, it should be remembered, a thing always becomes his at last who says it best, and thus makes it his own.