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These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred,
Each softly lucent as a rounded moon;
The diver Omar plucked them from their bed,
Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread.

— James Russell Lowell Heartsease and Rue (1888)

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Poetry

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart.

Poems (1844)

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

Abraham Lincoln (1864)

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

Poems: Second Series (1848)

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

My Study Windows (1871)

One day with life and heart
Is more than time enough to find a world.

Poems: Second Series (1848)

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There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature (1836)

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.

T. S. Eliot Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)

Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity...but be dense with meaning, 'something to be chewed and digested'.

George Chapman Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595)

I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

Michael Faraday

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: James Russell Lowell (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.