546 Quotes by James Russell Lowell

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

If I were asked what book is better than a cheap book, I should answer that there is one book better than a cheap book,-and that is a book honestly come by.

It is not without reason that fame is awarded only after death. The cloud-dust of notoriety which follows and envelops the men who drive with the wind bewilders contemporary judgment.

The New World's sons from England's breast we drew Such milk as bids remember whence we came, Proud of her past wherefrom our future grew, This window we inscribe with Raleigh's fame.

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.

Fortune is the rod of the weak, and the staff of the brave.

The riches of scholarship, the benignities of literature, defy fortune and outlive calamity. They are beyond the reach of thief or moth or rust. As they cannot be inherited, so they cannot, be alienated.

They are slaves who fear to speak, for the fallen and the weak.

We look at death through the cheap-glazed windows of the flesh, and believe him the monster which the flawed and cracked glass represents him.