Frases de James Russell Lowell

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“En general, quienes no tienen nada que decir invierten el mayor tiempo posible en no decir nada.”

“Los humanos no saben lo que poseen en la Tierra. Será porque la mayoría no ha tenido ocasión de abandonarla y regresar después a ella.”

“Una espina de experiencia vale más que un bosque de advertencias.”

“Bienaventurados los que no tienen nada que decir, y que resisten la tentación de decirlo.”

“¡Cuánta confianza nos inspira un libro viejo del cual el tiempo nos ha hecho ya la crítica!”

“La democracia otorga a cada uno de los hombres el derecho a ser el opresor de sí mismo.”

“Las desgracias más temidas son, de ordinario, las que no llegan jamás.”

“Si la juventud es un defecto, es un defecto del que nos curamos demasiado pronto.”

“The capacity of indignation makes an essential part of the outfit of every honest man.”

“He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, and not progress, the highest lesson of statecraft.”

“Darkness is strong, and so is Sin,
But surely God endures forever.”

“To be told that we ought not to agitate the question of Slavery, when it is that which is forever agitating us, is like telling a man with the fever and ague on him to stop shaking and he will be cured. The discussion of Slavery is said to be dangerous, but dangerous to what?…Discussion is the very life of free institutions, the fruitful mother of all political and moral enlightenment, and yet the question of all questions must be tabooed.”

“T was kin' o' kingdom-come to look
On sech a blessed cretur.”

“To say why gals acts so or so,
Or don't, 'ould be persumin';
Mebby to mean yes an' say no
Comes nateral to women.”

“Communism means barbarism, but Socialism means, or wishes to mean, cooperation and community of interests, sympathy, the giving to the hands not so large a share as to the brains, but a larger share than hitherto in the wealth they must combine to produce - means, in short, the practical application of Christianity to life, and has in it the secret of an orderly and benign reconstruction.”

“In life's small things be resolute and great
To keep thy muscle trained: know'st thou when Fate
Thy measure takes, or when she'll say to thee,
"I find thee worthy; do this deed for me?"”

“Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man;
He’s ben on all sides thet give places or pelf;
But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,—
He’s ben true to one party, an’ thet is himself.”

“There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one,
Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on;
Whose prose is grand verse while his verse the Lord knows
Is some of it pr— No, 't is not even prose!”

“The birch, most shy and lady-like of trees,
Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves,
And hints at her foregone gentilities
With some saved relics of her wealth of leaves.”

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

“The traitor to humanity is the traitor most accursed;
Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod,
Than to be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to God!”

“From the summit of power men no longer turn their eyes upward, but begin to look about them. Aspiration sees only one side of every question; possession, many.”

“There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business.”

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

“In vain we call old notions fudge,
And bend our conscience to our dealing;
The Ten Commandments will not budge,
And stealing will continue stealing.”

“No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself.”

“They came three thousand miles, and died,
To keep the Past upon its throne;
Unheard, beyond the ocean tide,
Their English mother made her moan.”

“Bad work follers ye ez long's ye live.”

“Where Church and State are habitually associated it is natural that minds, even of a high order, should unconsciously come to regard religion as only a subtler mode of police.”

“Blessed are they who have nothing to say, and who cannot be persuaded to say it.”

“Be noble! and the nobleness that lies
In other men, sleeping but never dead,
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.”

“It's 'most enough to make a deacon swear.”

“Soft-heartedness, in times like these,
Shows sof'ness in the upper story.”

“Along A River-Side, I Know Not Where,
I walked one night in mystery of dream;
A chill creeps curdling yet beneath my hair,
To think what chanced me by the pallid gleam
Of a moon-wraith that waned through haunted air.”

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

“Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.”

“God makes sech nights, all white an' still,
Fur'z you can look or listen,
Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill,
All silence an' all glisten.”