546 Quotes by James Russell Lowell

Tyranny is always weakness.

This child is not mine as the first was; I cannot sing it to rest; I cannot lift it up fatherly, And bless it upon my breast. Yet it lies in my little one’s cradle, And sits in my little one’s chair, And the light of the heaven she ’s gone to Transfigures its golden hair.

Ah, in this world, where every guiding thread Ends suddenly in the one sure centre, death, The visionary hand of Might-have-been Alone can fill Desire’s cup to the brim!

Men’s thoughts and opinions are in a great degree vassals of him who invents a new phrase or re-applies an old epithet. The thought or feeling a thousand times repeated becomes his at last who utters it best.

Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.

On one issue at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women.

True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgement.

As one lamp lights another, nor grows less, So nobleness enkindleth nobleness.

The misfortunes hardest to bear are these which never came.