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.”

“Ez to my princerples, I glory
In hevin' nothin' o' the sort.”

“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.”

“When I was a beggarly boy,
And lived in a cellar damp,
I had not a friend nor a toy,
But I had Aladdin's lamp.”

“Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown
An' peeked in thru' the winder,
An there sot Huldy all alone,
'ith no one nigh to hender.”

“All kin' o' smily round the lips,
An' teary round the lashes.”

“You've gut to git up airly
Ef you want to take in God.”

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

“The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accurst.”

“Folks never understand the folks they hate.”

“Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome [[May],
Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold.”

“New times demand new measures and new men;
The world advances, and in time outgrows
The laws which in our father's times were best;
And doubtless, after us, some purer scheme
Will be shaped out by wiser men than we,
Made wiser by the steady growth of truth.”

“Earth’s noblest thing, — a woman perfected.”

“The clear, sweet singer with the crown of snow
Not whiter than the thoughts that housed below.”

“The democratic theory is that those Constitutions are likely to prove steadiest which have the broadest base, that the right to vote makes a safety - valve of every voter, and that the best way of teaching a man how to vote is to give him the chance of practice. For the question is no longer the academic one, "Is it wise to give every man the ballot?" but rather the practical one, "Is it prudent to deprive whole classes of it any longer?" It may be conjectured that it is cheaper in the long run to lift men up than to hold them down, and that the ballot in their hands is less dangerous to society than a sense of wrong in their heads.”

“Of my merit
On thet pint you yourself may jedge;
All is, I never drink no sperit,
Nor I haint never signed no pledge.”

“Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.”

“One of the most curious of these frenzies of exclusion was that against the emancipation of the Jews. All share in the government of the world was denied for centuries to perhaps the ablest, certainly the most tenacious, race that had ever lived in it - the race to whom we owed our religion and the purest spiritual stimulus and consolation to be found in all literature - a race in which ability seems as natural and hereditary as the curve of their noses, and whose blood, furtively mingling with the bluest bloods in Europe, has quickened them with its own indomitable impulsion.”

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

“There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.”

“Their children learned the lesson of compromise only too well, and it was the application of it to a question of fundamental morals that cost us our civil war. We learned once for all that compromise makes a good umbrella but a poor roof; that it is a temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.”

“Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart.”

“No man is born into the world whose work
Is not born with him. There is always work,
And tools to work withal, for those who will;
And blessed are the horny hands of toil.”

“Ef you want peace, the thing you've gut tu du
Is jes' to show you're up to fightin', tu.”

“A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.”

“Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us;
The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in,
The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us,
We bargain for the graves we lie in;
At the Devil's booth are all things sold
Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold.”

“An umbrella is of no avail against a Scotch mist.”

“Like streams that keep a summer mind
Snow-hid in Jenooary.”

“In a society like ours, where every man may transmute his private thought into history and destiny by dropping it into the ballot-box, a peculiar responsibility rests upon the individual. Nothing can absolve us from doing our best to look at all public questions as citizens, and therefore in some sort as administrators and rulers. For, though during its term of office the government be practically as independent of the popular will as that of Russia, yet every fourth year the people are called upon to pronounce upon the conduct of their affairs.”

“There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge,
Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge.”