James Russell Lowell

There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.

Solitude is as needed to the imagination as society is wholesome to the character.

What men prize most is a privilege, even if it be that of chief mourner at a funeral.

The foolish and the dead never change their opinions.

It is mediocrity which makes laws and sets mantraps and spring-guns in the realm of free song, saying thus far shalt thou go and no further.

I don't believe in principle, but I do in interest.

It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dangerous, but the revolts of the intelligence.

It is the rooted instinct in men to admire what is better and more beautiful than themselves.

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.

Democracy give every man the right to be his own oppressor.

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

Light is the symbol of truth.

A reading machine, always wound up and going, he mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.

The idol is the measure of the worshipper.

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

There is no self-delusion more fatal than that which makes the conscience dreamy with the anodyne of lofty sentiments, while the life is groveling and sensual.

Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or by the handle.

The true ideal is not opposed to the real but lies in it and blessed are the eyes that find it.

Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.

It is the privilege of genius that to it life never grows commonplace as to the rest of us.

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

Though old the thought and oft expressed. 'Tis his at last who says it best.

What a sense of security in an old book which Time has criticized for us

In creating, the only hard thing's to begin A grass blade's no easier to make than an oak.