James Russell Lowell
41 quotations
Democracy give every man the right to be his own oppressor.
To educate the intelligence is to expand the horizon of its wants and desires.
One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.
Fortune is the rod of the weak, and the staff of the brave.
Freedom is the only law which genius knows.
It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.
The true ideal is not opposed to the real but lies in it; and blessed are the eyes that find it.
Sorrow is the great idealizer.
The brain can be easy to buy, but the heart never comes to market.
The idol is the measure of the worshipper.
Incredulity robs us of many pleasures, and gives us nothing in return.
It is the rooted instinct in men to admire what is better and more beautiful than themselves.
It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dangerous, but the revolts of the intelligence.
I don't believe in principle, but I do in interest.
The mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts, and dwell a hermit anywhere.
He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.
The misfortunes hardest to bear are these which never came.
Light is the symbol of truth.
In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.
The foolish and the dead never change their opinions.
What men prize most is a privilege, even if it be that of chief mourner at a funeral.
The eye is the notebook of the poet.
The surest plan to make a man is, think him so.
An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
A reading machine, always wound up and going, he mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.