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• It was in making education not only common to all, but in some sense compulsory on all, that the destiny of the free republics of America was practically settled.
  -- James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) -- New England Two Centuries ago...
• Aspiration sees only one side of every question; possession many.
  -- James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) -- New England Two Centuries ago...
• Truly there is a tide in the affairs of men; but there is no gulf-stream setting forever in one direction.
  -- James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) -- New England Two Centuries ago...
• Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.
  -- James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) -- New England Two Centuries ago...
• Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
  -- James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) -- Rousseau and the Sentimentali...
• From lower to the higher next, Not to the top, is Nature's tex
  And embryo Good, to reach full stature, Absorbs the Evil in its nature....
• Not only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie
  Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not....
• The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers, is that which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience.
  -- James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) -- My Study Windows, Abraham Lincoln, 1864...
• In creating, the only hard thing is to begin: a grass blade's no easier to make than an oak.
  -- James Russell Lowell...