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James Russell Lowell Quotes - Page 13

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Now on the hills I hear the thunder mutter... Nearer and nearer rolls the thunder-clap, - You can hear the quick heart of the tempest beat.... Look! look! that livid flash! And instantly follows the rattling thunder, As

Now on the hills I hear the thunder mutter... Nearer and nearer rolls the thunder-clap, - You can hear the quick heart of the tempest beat.... Look! look! that livid flash! And instantly follows the rattling thunder, As if some cloud-crag, split asunder, Fell, splintering with a ruinous crash, On the Earth, which crouches in silence under; And now a solid gray wall of rain Shuts off the landscape, mile by mile.

James Russell Lowell
Wall, Rain, Heart

It is mediocrity which makes laws and sets mantraps and spring-guns in the realm of free song, saying thus far shalt thou go and no further.

James Russell Lowell
Song, Spring, Gun
James Russell Lowell, Edward Everett Hale (1902). “Early prose writings of James Russell Lowell”

In the storm, like a prophet o'ermaddened, Thou singest and tossest thy branches; Thy heart with the terror is gladdened, Thou forebodest the dread avalanches.... In the calm thou o'erstretchest the valleys With thine arms, as if blessings imploring, Like an old king led forth from his palace, When his people to battle are pouring.

James Russell Lowell
Kings, Heart, Blessing
James Russell Lowell (2016). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)”, p.176, Delphi Classics

The victory's in believing.

James Russell Lowell
Believe, Victory, Belief
James Russell Lowell (1898). “Poems of James Russell Lowell With Biographical Sketch by Nathan Haskell Dole”, p.323, Library of Alexandria

And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

James Russell Lowell
Light, Choices, Forever
James Russell Lowell (1871). “The poetical works of James Russell Lowell”, p.66

Did man e'er live Saw priest or woman yet forgive?

James Russell Lowell
Forgiveness, Men, Forgiving
James Russell Lowell (2016). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)”, p.712, Delphi Classics

Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, We are happy now because God so wills it; No matter how barren the past may have been, 'T is enough for us now that the leaves are green; We sit in the warm shade and feel right well How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell... The breeze comes whispering in our ear, That dandelions are blossoming near... Every thing is upward striving; 'T is as easy now for the heart to be true As for grass to be green or skies to be blue, - 'T is the natural way of living.

James Russell Lowell
Summer, Heart, Past
James Russell Lowell, “The Vision Of Sir Launfal”

To genius life never grows commonplace.

James Russell Lowell
Genius, Grows, Commonplace

The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change; Then let it come: I have no dread of what Is called for by the instinct of mankind. Nor think I that God's world would fall apart Because we tear a parchment more or less. Truth is eternal, but her effluence, With endless change, is fitted to the hour; Her mirror is turned forward, to reflect The promise of the future, not the past. I do not fear to follow out the truth.

James Russell Lowell
Fall, Past, Thinking
James Russell Lowell (1844). “Poems”, p.178

[B]ut in literature, it should be remembered, a thing always becomes his at last who says it best, and thus makes it his own.

James Russell Lowell
Literature, Lasts, Should
James Russell Lowell (1870). “Among My Books”, p.41

We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage.

James Russell Lowell
War, Kind, Christ
James Russell Lowell (1871). “The poetical works of James Russell Lowell”, p.191

Whoever can endure unmixed delight, whoever can tolerate music and painting and poetry all in one, whoever wishes to be rid of thought and to let the busy anvils of the brain be silent for a time, let him read in the "Faery Queen."

James Russell Lowell
Time, Queens, Brain
James Russell Lowell (1870). “Among My Books: First [-second] series”, p.200

New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.

James Russell Lowell
Onward And Upward, Progress, Ancient
'The Present Crisis' (1845)

They talk about their Pilgrim blood, their birthright high and holy! a mountain-stream that ends in mud thinks is melancholy.

James Russell Lowell
Thinking, Blood, Mountain
James Russell Lowell (1896). “The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell”

All share in the government of the world was denied for centuries to perhaps the ablest, certainly the most tenacious race that had ever lived in it

James Russell Lowell
Race, Government, World
William Makepeace Thackeray, John Henry Newman, Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, Walter Bagehot (1910). “Essays, English and American: With Introductions and Notes”

How I do love the earth. I feel it thrill under my feet. I feel somehow as if it were conscious of my love, as if something passed into my dancing blood from it.

James Russell Lowell
Blood, Feet, Dancing
James Russell Lowell (2012). “The Vision of Sir Launfal And Other Poems by James Russell Lowell, Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Julian W. Abernethy, PH.D.”, p.31, tredition

Truth is quite beyond the reach of satire. There is so brave a simplicity in her that she can no more be made ridiculous than an oak or a pine.

James Russell Lowell
Brave, Simplicity, Ridiculous
James Russell Lowell (2016). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)”, p.433, Delphi Classics

So we're all right, an' I, for one, Don't think our cause'll lose in vally By rammin' Scriptur' in our gun, An' gittin' Natur' for an ally.

James Russell Lowell
Gun, Thinking, Causes

May is a pious fraud of the almanac A ghastly parody of real Spring Shaped out of snow and breathed with eastern wind.

James Russell Lowell
Spring, Real, Wind
James Russell Lowell (1871). “The poetical works of James Russell Lowell”, p.372

'T is heaven alone that is given away; 'T is only God may be had for the asking.

James Russell Lowell
Heaven, Asking, May
James Russell Lowell (2012). “The Vision of Sir Launfal And Other Poems by James Russell Lowell, Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Julian W. Abernethy, PH.D.”, p.56, tredition

The Don Quixote of one generation may live to hear himself called the savior of society by the next.

James Russell Lowell
Society, Generations, May
James Russell Lowell (1888). “Books and Libraries: And Other Papers”

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

James Russell Lowell
Men, Race, Elderly
James Russell Lowell (1873). “The Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell”, p.432

The soil out of which such men as he are made is good to be born on, good to live on, good to die for and to be buried in.

James Russell Lowell
Men, Soil, Born
James Russell Lowell (1887). “Democracy, and Other Addresses”

Heaven is neither here nor there to me. Everywhere and nowhere. Just not in between, But I believe in Heaven.

James Russell Lowell
Believe, Heaven, I Believe

Not only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not.

James Russell Lowell
Lying, Heaven, Soul
James Russell Lowell (1871). “The poetical works of James Russell Lowell”, p.117

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