Quote #76

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 of Fate's contriving, Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss.

More from James Russell Lowell

  1. 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…
  2. Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.
  3. 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…
  4. They come transfigured back, Secure from change in their high-hearted ways, Beautiful evermore, and with the rays Of morn on their white Sh…
  5. What a sense of security in an old book which Time has criticized for us!
  6. There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business.
  7. Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.
  8. Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.

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