Quotes from James Russell Lowell

Fate loves the fearless.

Folks never understand the folks they hate.

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.

As life runs on, the road grows strange with faces new - and near the end. The milestones into headstones change, Neath every one a friend.

Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.

Life is a sheet of paper white / Whereon each one of us may write / His word or two, and then comes night.

While tenderness of feeling and susceptibility to generous emotions are accidents of temperament, goodness is an achievement of the will and a quality of the life.

He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, and not progress, the highest lesson in statecraft.

Reputation is only a candle, of wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit.

Granting our wish is one of Fate's saddest jokes.

But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet. Lessen like sound of friends departing feet; And death is beautiful as feet of friend. Coming with welcome at our journey's end.

Life is the jailer, death the angel sent to draw the unwilling bolts and set us free.

There is only one thing better than tradition and that is the original and eternal life out of which all tradition takes its rise.

There is no self-delusion more fatal than that which makes the conscience dreamy with the anodyne of lofty sentiments, while the life is groveling and sensual

It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.

Where one person shapes their life by precept and example, there are a thousand who have shaped it by impulse and circumstances.

Good luck is the willing handmaid of a upright and energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.

But better far it is to speak One simple word, which now and then Shall waken their free nature in the weak And friendless sons of men.

New conditions of life will stimulate thought and give new forms to its expression.

O reputation! dearer far than life.

Life is constantly weighing us in very sensitive scales, and telling every one of us precisely what his real weight is to the last grain of dust.

To be young is surely the best, if the most precarious, gift of life.

Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving.