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James Russell Lowell Quotes (1819-1891)
Writer, Poet
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About James Russell Lowell
James Russell Lowell (22 February 1819 – 12 August 1891) was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the Fireside Poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets who rivaled the popularity of British poets.
Best James Russell Lowell Quotes
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful James Russell Lowell quotes.
“A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.”
“His heart kep' goin' pity-pat,
But hern went pity-Zekle.”
But hern went pity-Zekle.”
“Folks never understand the folks they hate.”
“Like streams that keep a summer mind
Snow-hid in Jenooary.”
Snow-hid in Jenooary.”
“Ez to my princerples, I glory
In hevin' nothin' o' the sort.”
In hevin' nothin' o' the sort.”
“One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.”
“'T was kin' o' kingdom-come to look
On sech a blessed cretur.”
On sech a blessed cretur.”
“She doeth little kindnesses
Which most leave undone, or despise.”
Which most leave undone, or despise.”
James Russell Lowell Quotes by Topic
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James Russell Lowell on Character 9 quotes
View all 9 quotes on Character →James Russell Lowell on Truth 8 quotes
View all 8 quotes on Truth →James Russell Lowell on Trees 6 quotes
View all 6 quotes on Trees →James Russell Lowell on Poetry 4 quotes
“For, of all compositions, he thought that the sonnet Best repaid all the toil you expended upon it.”
James Russell Lowell on War 3 quotes
View all 3 quotes on War →James Russell Lowell on Genius 3 quotes
“Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge.”
James Russell Lowell on Books 3 quotes
“What a sense of security in an old book which Time has criticised for us!”
James Russell Lowell on Love 3 quotes
“Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.”
James Russell Lowell on Religion 3 quotes
“Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.”
James Russell Lowell on New England 3 quotes
“Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.”
James Russell Lowell on Freedom 3 quotes
“Freedom needs all her poets; it is they Who give her aspirations wings, And to the wiser law of music sway Her wild imaginings.”
James Russell Lowell on Flowers 3 quotes
“Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, First pledge of blithesome May, Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold.”
What James Russell Lowell Said About Others
Discover personal opinions James Russell Lowell shared regarding contemporaries.
James Russell Lowell on Women 3 quotes
View all 3 quotes on Women →James Russell Lowell on Ralph Waldo Emerson 3 quotes
“There is no man living to whom, as a writer, so many of us feel and thankfully acknowledge so great an indebtedness for ennobling impulses.”
James Russell Lowell on Mothers
James Russell Lowell on George Washington
James Russell Lowell on Geoffrey Chaucer
James Russell Lowell on Abraham Lincoln
“Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan Repeating us by rote: For him her Old World moulds aside she threw And, choosing sweet clay from the breast Of the unexhausted West, With stuff untainted shaped a hero new.”
Quotes About James Russell Lowell
Gain deeper perspective through quotes about James Russell Lowell from others.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz on James Russell Lowell
“Most of the books published during the five-year period leading up to, during, and after the invasion of Mexico were war-mongering tracts. Euro-American settlers were nearly all literate, and this was the period of the foundational "American literature," with writers James Fenimore Cooper, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville all active-each of whom remains read, revered, and studied in the twenty-first century, as national and nationalist writers, not as colonialists. Although some of the writers, like Melville and Longfellow, paid little attention to the war, most of the others either fiercely supported it or opposed it...Opposition to the Mexican War came from writers who were active abolitionists such as Thoreau, Whittier, and Lowell. They believed the war was a plot of southern slave owners to extend slavery, punishing Mexico for having outlawed slavery when it became independent from Spain. However, even the abolitionists believed in the "manifest destiny of the English race," as Lowell put it in 1859, "to occupy this whole continent and to display there that practical understanding in matters of government and colonization which no other race has given such proof of possessing since the Romans."”
Henry James on James Russell Lowell
“The thing he loved most in the world after his country was the English tongue, of which he was an infallible master, and his devotion to which was in fact a sort of agent in his patriotism.”
About James Russell Lowell
James Russell Lowell (22 February 1819 – 12 August 1891) was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the Fireside Poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets who rivaled the popularity of British poets.