James Russell Lowell

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.

There is no work of genius which has not been the delight of mankind, no word of genius to which the human heart and soul have not sooner or later responded.

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,-_x000D_ _x000D_ Yet that scaffold sways the Future, and, behind the dim unknown,_x000D_ _x000D_ Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

And I honor the man who is willing to sink half his present repute for the freedom to think, and, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t' other half for the freedom to speak.

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

There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.

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

Who's not sat tense before his own heart's curtain.

It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.

Where one person shapes their life by precept and example, there are a thousand who have shaped it by impulse and circumstances.

To educate the intelligence is to expand the horizon of its wants and desires.

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

The mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts, and dwell a hermit anywhere.

Once to every person and nation come the moment to decide. In the conflict of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.

It is by presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of man is tested.

Poetry is something to make us wiser and better, by continually revealing those types of beauty and truth, which God has set in all men's souls.

As life runs on, the road grows strange with faces new - and near the end. The milestones into headstones change, Neath every one a friend.

Sincerity is impossible, unless it pervade the whole being, and the pretence of it saps the very foundation of character.

Freedom is the only law which genius knows.

Endurance is the crowning quality, And patience all the passion of great hearts.

Children are God's Apostles, sent forth, day by day, to preach of love, and hope, and peace.