James Russell Lowell

Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.

There is no work of genius which has not been the delight of mankind, no word of genius to which the human heart and soul have not sooner or later responded.

Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is.

Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.

Simple as it seems, it was a great discovery that the key of knowledge could turn both ways, that it could open, as well as lock, the door of power to the many.

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.

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

Truly there is a tide in the affairs of men; but there is no gulf-stream setting forever in one direction.

From the summit of power men no longer turn their eyes upward, but begin to look about them. Aspiration sees only one side of every question; possession, many.

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

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

If there are men who regret the Good Old Times, without too clear a notion of what they were, they should at least be thankful that we are rid of that misguided energy of faith which justifies conscience in making men unrelentingly cruel.

Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold-bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences in belief.

The question of common sense is always "What is it good for?"—a question which would abolish the rose and be answered triumphantly by the cabbage.

What a sense of security in an old book which Time has criticised for us!

The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.

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.

They come transfigured back, Secure from change in their high-hearted ways, Beautiful evermore, and with the rays Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation!

Here was a type of the true elder race, And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.

Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.

The little that we do Is but half-nobly true; With our laborious hiving What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, Only secure in every one's conniving,

Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides Into the silent hollow of the past; What is there that abides To make the next age better for the last?

It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is, and what shifts we make to escape thinking. There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds.

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