Honesty & Integrity Quote by Abbott L. Lowell

A moral command dressed up as workplace etiquette, Lowell's line is really a blueprint for how an elite class wants ambition to behave: energetic, productive, and carefully non-disruptive. "You will not accept credit that is due to another" sounds like simple fairness, but it's also an attempt to stabilize a system where recognition is currency. In institutions that run on prestige - universities, learned societies, the old Brahmin networks Lowell moved in - misassigned credit doesn't just bruise egos; it scrambles hierarchies. The sentence is an inoculation against that chaos: know your place, keep the ledger clean.

The second clause sharpens the social engineering. "Harbor jealousy" makes envy not a passing feeling but a secret, corrosive act. And "an explorer who is more fortunate" quietly reframes success as luck rather than structural advantage or insider access. If the other person "found" more, published first, got the funding, made the name, you are asked to treat it as fortune's whim - not something to contest. That is both consoling and disciplining: it soothes the unsuccessful while discouraging open rivalry.

Context matters. Lowell, a prominent Harvard president in a period obsessed with merit, progress, and gentlemanly restraint, isn't just talking about personal virtue. He's defending a culture that depends on competition without open conflict. The intent is to keep the race running while insisting no one should tip over the track.