The intellect has only one failing, which, to be sure, is a very considerable one. It has no conscience. — James Russell Lowell Copy Share Image
Human nature has a much greater genius for sameness than for originality. — James Russell Lowell Copy Share Image
It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us. — James Russell Lowell Copy Share Image
To educate the intelligence is to expand the horizon of its wants and desires. — James Russell Lowell Copy Share Image
“On Lincoln: "A profound common sense is the best genius for statesmanship.” — James Russell Lowell Copy Share Image
Attention is the stuff that memory is made of, and memory is accumulated genius. — James Russell Lowell Copy Share Image
There are two kinds of genius. The first and highest may be said to speak out of the eternal to the present,… — James Russell Lowell Copy Share Image
Talent is that which is in a man's power; genius is that in whose power a man is. — James Russell Lowell Copy Share Image
There is no work of genius which has not been the delight of mankind, no word of genius to which the human… — James Russell Lowell Copy Share Image
A profound common sense is the best genius for statesmanship. — James Russell Lowell Copy Share Image
It is only the intellect that can be thoroughly and hideously wicked. It can forget everything in the attainment of its ends.… — James Russell Lowell Copy Share Image
He gives only the worthless gold who gives from a sense of duty. — James Russell Lowell Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share Image
The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment. — James Russell Lowell Copy Share 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 Copy Share Image
[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 Copy Share Image
It may be glorious to write Thoughts that shall glad the two or three High souls, like those far stars that come in sight… — James Russell Lowell Copy Share Image