8 James Russell Lowell Quotes on Wisdom

James Russell Lowell quotes on wisdom

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

37. To win the secret of a weed's plain heart.

63. My gran'ther's rule was safer 'n 'tis to crow: Don't never prophesy-onless ye know.

70. No, never say nothin' without you're compelled tu, An' then don't say nothin' thet you can be held tu.

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

90. He must be a born leader or misleader of men, or must have been sent into the world unfurnished with that modulating and restraining balance - wheel which we call a sense of humor, who, in old age, has as strong a confidence in his opinions and in the necessity of bringing the universe into conformity with them as he had in youth. In a world the very condition of whose being is that it should be in perpetual flux, where all seems mirage, and the one abiding thing is the effort to distinguish realities from appearances, the elderly man must be indeed of a singularly tough and valid fibre who is certain that he has any clarified residuum of experience, any assured verdict of reflection, that deserves to be called an opinion, or who, even if he had, feels that he is justified in holding mankind by the button while he is expounding it.

92. There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat. And in this case, also, the prudent will prepare themselves to encounter what they cannot prevent. Some people advise us to put on the brakes, as if the movement of which we are conscious were that of a railway train running down an incline. But a metaphor is no argument, though it be sometimes the gunpowder to drive one home and imbed it in the memory.

102. In the scales of the destinies brawn will never weigh so much as brain. Our healing is not in the storm or in the whirlwind, it is not in monarchies, or aristocracies, or democracies, but will be revealed by the still small voice that speaks to the conscience and the heart, prompting us to a wider and wiser humanity.