Ifs Quotes by James Russell Lowell

15 Ifs quotes by James Russell Lowell

All Ifs quotes James Russell Lowell’s page

James Russell Lowell’s 15 verses on “ifs” weave together history, nature, and personal reflection. Though brief, they capture the poet’s keen eye for how small choices echo through larger narratives.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

If one waits for the right time to come before writing, the right time never comes.

James Russell Lowell

Image

A ginooine statesman should be on his guard, if he must hev beliefs, not to b'lieve 'em too hard.

James Russell Lowell

Image

To be young is surely the best, if the most precarious, gift of life.

James Russell Lowell

Image

God is not dumb, that he should speak no more; If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness And find'st not Sinai, 'tis…

James Russell Lowell

Image

If the devil take a less hateful shape to us than to our fathers, he is as busy with us as with…

James Russell Lowell

Image

Men! whose boast it is that ye Come of fathers brave and free, If there breathe on earth a slave, Are ye…

James Russell Lowell

Image

If God made poets for anything, it was to keep alive the traditions of the pure, the holy, and the beautiful.

James Russell Lowell

Image

Most men make the voyage of life as if they carried sealed orders which they were not to open till they were…

James Russell Lowell

Image

God's livery is a very plain one; but its wearers have good reason to be content. If it have not so much…

James Russell Lowell

Image

Good heavens, of what un costly material is our earthly happiness composed... if we only knew it. What incomes have we not…

James Russell Lowell

Image

How I do love the earth. I feel it thrill under my feet. I feel somehow as if it were conscious of…

James Russell Lowell

Image

Now on the hills I hear the thunder mutter... Nearer and nearer rolls the thunder-clap,— You can hear the quick heart of…

James Russell Lowell

Image

Scepticism commonly takes up the room left by defect of imagination, and is the very quality of mind most likely to seek…

James Russell Lowell

Image

In the storm, like a prophet o’ermaddened, Thou singest and tossest thy branches; Thy heart with the terror is gladdened, Thou forebodest…

James Russell Lowell

Image

Again, now, now, again Plashes the rain in heavy gouts, The crinkled lightning Seems ever brightening... And loud and long Again the…

James Russell Lowell

Image

Other authors on Ifs

More by James Russell Lowell

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

James Russell Lowell

Image

He gives only the worthless gold who gives from a sense of duty.

James Russell Lowell

Image

As life runs on, the road grows strange with faces new - and near the end. The milestones into headstones change, Neath every one…

James Russell Lowell

Image

Where one person shapes their life by precept and example, there are a thousand who have shaped it by impulse and circumstances.

James Russell Lowell

Image

Granting our wish is one of Fate's saddest jokes.

James Russell Lowell

Image

Most religion-mongers have bated their paradises with a bit of toasted cheese. They have tempted the body with large promises of possessions in their…

James Russell Lowell

Image

The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment.

James Russell Lowell

Image

O reputation! dearer far than life.

James Russell Lowell

Image

Keats longed for fame, but longed above all to deserve it.

James Russell Lowell

Image

It is beginning to be doubtful whether Parliament and Congress sit in Westminster and Washington, or in the editorial rooms of the leading journals,--so…

James Russell Lowell