James Russell Lowell

"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?"

"In a society like ours, where every man may transmute his private thought into history and destiny by dropping it into the ballot-box, a peculiar responsibility rests upon the individual. Nothing can absolve us from doing our best to look at all public questions as citizens, and therefore in some sort as administrators and rulers. For, though during its term of office the government be practically as independent of the popular will as that of Russia, yet every fourth year the people are called upon to pronounce upon the conduct of their affairs."

"Whatever be the effect of slavery upon the States where it exists, there can be no doubt that its moral influence upon the North has been most disastrous. It has compelled our politicians into that first fatal compromise with their moral instincts and hereditary principles which makes all consequent ones easy; it has accustomed us to makeshifts instead of statesmanship, to subterfuge instead of policy, to party-platforms for opinions, and to a defiance of the public sentiment of the civilized world for patriotism."

"Both of them mean that Labor has no rights which Capital is bound to respect,—that there is no higher law than human interest and cupidity."

"To be told that we ought not to agitate the question of Slavery, when it is that which is forever agitating us, is like telling a man with the fever and ague on him to stop shaking and he will be cured. The discussion of Slavery is said to be dangerous, but dangerous to what?...Discussion is the very life of free institutions, the fruitful mother of all political and moral enlightenment, and yet the question of all questions must be tabooed."

"It is the tendency of all creeds, opinions, and political dogmas that have once defined themselves in institutions to become inoperative."

"We are persuaded that the election of Mr. Lincoln will do more than anything else to appease the excitement of the country. He has proved both his ability and his integrity; he has had experience enough in public affairs to make him a statesman, and not enough to make him a politician."

"The encroachments of Slavery upon our national policy have been like those of a glacier in a Swiss valley. Inch by inch, the huge dragon with his glittering scales and crests of ice coils itself onward, an anachronism of summer, the relic of a bygone world where such monsters swarmed. But it has its limit, the kindlier forces of Nature work against it, and the silent arrows of the sun are still, as of old, fatal to the frosty Python. Geology tells us that such enormous devastators once covered the face of the earth, but the benignant sunlight of heaven touched them, and they faded silently, leaving no trace but here and there the scratches of their talons, and the gnawed boulders scattered where they made their lair. We have entire faith in the benignant influence of Truth, the sunlight of the moral world, and believe that slavery, like other worn-out systems, will melt gradually before it."

"Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons."

"Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle."

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

"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."

"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?"

"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, A long account of nothings paid with loss."

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

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

"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!"

"The snow had begun in the gloaming, And busily all the night Had been heaping field and highway With a silence deep and white."

"Though old the thought and oft exprest, 'Tis his at last who says it best."

"Not failure, but low aim, is crime."

"Darkness is strong, and so is Sin, But only God endures forever!"

"Along A River-Side, I Know Not Where, I walked one night in mystery of dream; A chill creeps curdling yet beneath my hair, To think what chanced me by the pallid gleam Of a moon-wraith that waned through haunted air."

"God, give us peace! not such as lulls to sleep, But sword on thigh and brow with purpose knit! And let our Ship of State to harbor sweep, Her ports all up, her battle lanterns lit, And her leashed thunders gathering for their leap!"

"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."

"How little inventiveness there is in man, Grave copier of copies, I give thanks For a new relish, careless to inquire My pleasure's pedigree, if so it please, Nobly, I mean, nor renegade to art. The Grecian gluts me with its perfectness, Unanswerable as Euclid, self-contained, The one thing finished in this hasty world, Forever finished, though the barbarous pit, Fanatical on hearsay, stamp and shout As if a miracle could be encored."

"The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions."

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

"Sentiment is intellectualized emotion, — emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals by the fancy."

"No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself."

"An umbrella is of no avail against a Scotch mist."

"Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character."

"Where Church and State are habitually associated it is natural that minds, even of a high order, should unconsciously come to regard religion as only a subtler mode of police."

"A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic."

"He must be a born leader or misleader of men, or must have been sent into the world unfurnished with that modulating and restraining balance-wheel which we call a sense of humor, who, in old age, has as strong a confidence in his opinions and in the necessity of bringing the universe into conformity with them as he had in youth. In a world the very condition of whose being is that it should be in perpetual flux, where all seems mirage, and the one abiding thing is the effort to distinguish realities from appearances, the elderly man must be indeed of a singularly tough and valid fibre who is certain that he has any clarified residuum of experience, any assured verdict of reflection, that deserves to be called an opinion, or who, even if he had, feels that he is justified in holding mankind by the button while he is expounding it."

"I hear America sometimes playfully accused of sending you all your storms, and am in the habit of parrying the charge by alleging that we are enabled to do this because, in virtue of our protective system, we can afford to make better bad weather than anybody else. And what wiser use could we make of it than to export it in return for the paupers which some European countries are good enough to send over to us who have not attained to the same skill in the manufacture of them?"

"There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat. And in this case, also, the prudent will prepare themselves to encounter what they cannot prevent. Some people advise us to put on the brakes, as if the movement of which we are conscious were that of a railway train running down an incline. But a metaphor is no argument, though it be sometimes the gunpowder to drive one home and imbed it in the memory."