Not who you're looking for? Others named James Russell Lowell: American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat (1819-1891)
“There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.”
“If I were asked what book is better than a cheap book, I should answer that there is one book better than a cheap book, — and that is a book honestly come by.”
“It's 'most enough to make a deacon swear.”
“Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons.”
“Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold-bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences in belief.”
“A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.”
Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.
