Quote #75
Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides Into the silent hollow of the past; What is there that abides To make the next age better for the last?
More from James Russell Lowell
- It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is, and what shifts we make to escape thinking. There is no bore we dread being left alon…
- The little that we do Is but half-nobly true; With our laborious hiving What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, Life seems a jest …
- What a sense of security in an old book which Time has criticized for us!
- Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.
- Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.
- They come transfigured back, Secure from change in their high-hearted ways, Beautiful evermore, and with the rays Of morn on their white Sh…
- Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons.
- There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business.