546 Quotes by James Russell Lowell

Men! whose boast it is that ye Come of fathers brave and free, If there breathe on earth a slave, Are ye truly free and brave?

There is a law of neutralization of forces, which hinders bodies from sinking beyond a certain depth in the sea; but in the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.

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.

The one thing finished in this hasty world.

If youth be a defect, it is one that we outgrow only too soon.

It is good To lengthen to the last a sunny mood.

It is right precious to behold The first long surf of climbing light Flood all the thirsty east with gold.

No man is born into the world whose work Is not born with him. There is always work, And tools to work withal, for those who will; And blessed are the horny hands of toil.

It is curious for one who studies the action and reaction of national literature on each other, to see the humor of Swift and Sterne and Fielding, after filtering through Richter, reappear in Carlyle with a tinge of Germanism that makes it novel, alien, or even displeasing, as the case may be, to the English mind.