James Russell Lowell Quotes

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood - never.

The stream of time sweeps away errors, and leaves the truth for the inheritance of humanity.

When it comes to my own turn to lay my weapons down, I shall do so with thankfulness and fatigue, and whatever be my destiny afterward, I shall be glad to lie down with my fathers in honor. It is human at least, if not divine.

I buried him with mine own hands, in a place he showed me once when I was a squire at Storm’s End. No one shall ever find him there to disturb his rest.” He looked at Jaime defiantly. “I will defend King Tommen with all my strength, I swear it. I will give my life for his if need be. But I will never betray Renly, by word or deed. He was the king that should have been. He was the best of them.

Thousands of years ago the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burnt at the stake he'd taught his brothers to light, but he left them a gift they had not conceived and he lifted darkness from the face of the Earth.

When I'm killed, don't think of me Buried there in Cambrin Wood, Nor as in Zion think of me With the Intolerable Good. And there's one thing that I know well, I'm damned if I'll be damned to Hell!

Are there not thousands in the world who love their fellows even to the death, who feel the giant agony of the world, and more, like slaves to poor humanity, labor for mortal good?

After me, the Revolution - or, rather the ideas which formed it - will resume their course. It will be like a book from which the marker is removed, and one starts to read again at the page where one left off.

When any person suffers for someone in greater need, that person is a human.

There is a past which is gone forever, but there is a future which is still our own.

I believe the only hope for mankind lies in the hands of our young people.

The dead hold in their hands only what they have given away.

While we may not live to see the full realization of our ambition, we will have the satisfaction of knowing that the world we leave to our children will be better off for what we did.

Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.

A martyr's disciples suffer more than the martyr.

At one time I had given much thought to why men were so very rarely capable of living for an ideal. Now I saw that many, no, all men were capable of dying for one.

They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death are the allurements that act on the heart of man.

Being one step ahead makes you a leader Being fifty steps ahead could make you a martyr.

How many victims must that be? Slaughtered in vain across the land, And how many strugles must that be? Before we choose to live the profits plan Everybody sing- Every day create your History, Every path you take you're leaving your legacy Every soldier dies in his glory Every legend tells of conquest and liberty.

The great men of the earth are but the marking-stones on the road of humanity; they are the priests of its religion.

They are dead; but they live in each Patriot's breast, And their names are engraven on honor's bright crest.

You shall be my roots and I will be your shade, though the sun burns my leaves. You shall quench my thirst and I will feed you fruit, though time takes my seed. And when I'm lost and can tell nothing of this earth you will give me hope. And my voice you will always hear. And my hand you will always have. For I will shelter you. And I will comfort you. And even when we are nothing left, not even in death, I will remember you.

The future is not in our hands. We have no power over it. We can act only today. We have a sentence in our Constitution that says: 'We will allow the good God to make plans for the future - for yesterday has gone, tomorrow has not yet come and we have only today to make Him known, loved and served.' So we do not worry about the future.

We owe it to our past futile sacrifices to continue making further futile sacrifices.

Revolution calls my name. I will soon dwell in nothingness, and my name will be in the Pantheon of history.