Sentiment is intellectualized emotion; emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals by the fancy.
~ James Russell Lowell - [Sentiment]

Sincerity is impossible, unless it pervade the whole being, and the pretence of it saps the very foundation of character.
~ James Russell Lowell - [Sincerity]

Solitude is as needed to the imagination as society is wholesome to the character.
~ James Russell Lowell - [Solitude]

Those who know the truth are not equal to those who love it Confucius All truth is safe and nothing else is safe, but he who keeps back truth, or withholds it from men, from motives of expediency, is either a coward or a criminal.
~ James Russell Lowell - [Truth]

Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.
~ James Russell Lowell - [Truth]

Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed.
~ James Russell Lowell - [Truth]

Folks never understand the folks they hate.
~ James Russell Lowell - [Understanding]

There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.
~ James Russell Lowell - [Weakness]

Endurance is the crowning quality...
~ James Russell Lowell - [Perseverance]

The eye is the notebook of the poet.
~ James Russell Lowell - [Poetry and Poets]

The surest plan to make a man is, think him so.
~ James Russell Lowell - [Praise]

What men prize most is a privilege, even if it be that of chief mourner at a funeral.
~ James Russell Lowell - [Privilege]

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
~ James Russell Lowell - [Reason]

There is no self-delusion more fatal than that which makes the conscience dreamy with the anodyne of lofty sentiments, while the life is groveling and sensual.
~ James Russell Lowell - [Reverie]

A reading machine, always wound up and going, he mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.
~ James Russell Lowell - [Scholars and Scholarship]

There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.
~ James Russell Lowell - [Sea]

Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint.
~ James Russell Lowell - [Self-control]

It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dangerous, but the revolts of the intelligence.
~ James Russell Lowell - [Intelligence and Intellectuals]

I don't believe in principle, but I do in interest.
~ James Russell Lowell - [Interest]

The mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts, and dwell a hermit anywhere.
~ James Russell Lowell - [Introspection]