James Russell Lowell
Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do that day, which must be done, whether you like it or not.Collection: Morning
Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.Collection: Society
Endurance is the crowning quality, And patience all the passion of great hearts.Collection: Patience
One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.Collection: Experience
Light is the symbol of truth.Collection: Truth
The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers is that which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience.Collection: Faith
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.Collection: Sad
The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.Collection: Alone
All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.Collection: Romantic
Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how.Collection: Moving
Democracy is the form of government that gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.Collection: Government
The heart forgets its sorrow and ache.Collection: Sympathy
Poetry is something to make us wiser and better, by continually revealing those types of beauty and truth, which God has set in all men's souls.Collection: Beauty
Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime. Not failure, but low aim is crime.Collection: Failure
Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.Collection: Truth
Fate loves the fearless.Collection: Courage
As life runs on, the road grows strange with faces new - and near the end. The milestones into headstones change, Neath every one a friend.Collection: Life
Freedom is the only law which genius knows.Collection: Freedom
Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.Collection: Politics
Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.Collection: Government
To educate the intelligence is to expand the horizon of its wants and desires.Collection: Intelligence
Not failure, but low aim, is crime.Collection: Failure
True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgment.
A weed is no more than a flower in disguise, Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes.
Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.
Reputation is only a candle, of wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit.
The eye is the notebook of the poet.
Fortune is the rod of the weak, and the staff of the brave.
Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.
No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself.
A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.
There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.
In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.
There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.
Sincerity is impossible, unless it pervade the whole being, and the pretence of it saps the very foundation of character.
Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
The surest plan to make a man is, think him so.
There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.
Good luck is the willing handmaid of a upright and energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.
Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.
And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days.
It is by presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of man is tested.
Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed.
Blessed are they who have nothing to say and who cannot be persuaded to say it.
In creating, the only hard thing is to begin: a grass blade's no easier to make than an oak.
The mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts, and dwell a hermit anywhere.
On one issue at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women.
Where one person shapes their life by precept and example, there are a thousand who have shaped it by impulse and circumstances.
Incredulity robs us of many pleasures, and gives us nothing in return.