James Russell LowellThinkers

Adversity is like a knife, either serving us or cuting us as we grasp it by the blade or the handle.

The Angel is a being that always comes from God to us disguised.

Attention is the stuff that memory is made of, and memory is accumulated genius.

The Book is the bee which carries the quickening pollen from one to another mind.

Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof, which is to say that it is a temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, but almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.

Death is dawn, the waking from a weary night of fevers unto truth and light.

Democracy is a form of government that gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.

Egypt is the burnt-out torch which within her moldering hands once lit all the East.

Eloquence produces conviction for the moment.

Endurance is the crowning quality.