It is the vain endeavor to make ourselves what we are not that has strewn history with so many broken purposes and… — James Russell Lowell Copy Share Image
There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds. — James Russell Lowell Copy Share 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 Copy Share Image
It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is, and what shifts we make to escape thinking. There is no bore… — James Russell Lowell Copy Share Image
Year by year, more and more of the world gets disenchanted. Even the icy privacy of the arctic and antarctic circles is… — 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