James Russell Lowell

“It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.”

“Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.”

“Fate loves the fearless.”

“True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgment.”

“Incredulity robs us of many pleasures, and gives us nothing in return.”

“Good luck is the willing handmaid of a upright and energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.”

“Every person born into this world their work is born with them.”

“Reputation is only a candle, of wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit.”

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

“The heart forgets its sorrow and ache.”

“There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.”

“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.”

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

“A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.”

“There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.”

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

“Not failure, but low aim, is crime.”

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

“Light is the symbol of truth.”

“The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.”