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James Russell Lowell Quotes
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Men have their intellectual ancestry, and the likeness of some one of them is forever unexpectedly flashing out in the features of a descendant, it may be after a gap of several centuries. In the parliament of the present every man represents a constituency of the past.
James Russell Lowell
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While tenderness of feeling and susceptibility to generous emotions are accidents of temperament, goodness is an achievement of the will and a quality of the life.
James Russell Lowell
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Not but wut abstract war is horrid, I sign to thet with all my heart, But civilysation doos git forrid Sometimes, upon a powder-cart.
James Russell Lowell
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The future works out great men's destinies; The present is enough for common souls, Who, never looking forward, are indeed Mere clay wherein the footprints of their age Are petrified forever.
James Russell Lowell
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Let us be thankful that there is no court by which we can be excluded from our share in the inheritance of the great poets of all ages and countries, to which our simple humanity entitles us.
James Russell Lowell
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The opening of the first grammar school was the opening of the first trench against monopoly in Church and State.
James Russell Lowell
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Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees Bending to counterfeit a breeze...
James Russell Lowell
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All share in the government of the world was denied for centuries to perhaps the ablest, certainly the most tenacious race that had ever lived in it
James Russell Lowell
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The right of individual property is no doubt the very corner-stone of civilization, as hitherto understood; but I am a little impatient of being told that property is entitled to exceptional consideration because it bears all the burdens of the state. It bears those, indeed, which can be most easily borne, but poverty pays with its person the chief expenses of war, pestilence, and famine.
James Russell Lowell
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Many-sidedness of culture makes our vision clearer and keener in particulars.
James Russell Lowell
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The secret of force in writing lies not so much in the pedigree of nouns and adjectives and verbs, as in having something that you believe in to say, and making the parts of speech vividly conscious of it.
James Russell Lowell
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The quiet tenderness of Chaucer, where you almost seem to hear the hot tears falling, and the simple choking words sobbed out.
James Russell Lowell
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And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.
James Russell Lowell
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A stray hair, by its continued irritation, may give more annoyance than a smart blow.
James Russell Lowell
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Scepticism commonly takes up the room left by defect of imagination, and is the very quality of mind most likely to seek for sensual proof of supersensual things. If one came from the dead it could not believe; and yet it longs for such a witness, and will put up with a very dubious one.
James Russell Lowell
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New conditions of life will stimulate thought and give new forms to its expression.
James Russell Lowell
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The pale and quiet moon Makes her calm forehead bare, And the last fragments of the storm, Like shattered rigging from a fight at sea, Silent and few, are drifting over me.
James Russell Lowell
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A beggar through the world am I, From place to place I wander by. Fill up my pilgrim's scrip for me, For Christ's sweet sake and charity.
James Russell Lowell
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God's livery is a very plain one; but its wearers have good reason to be content. If it have not so much gold-lace about it as Satan's, it keeps out foul weather better, and is besides a great deal cheaper.
James Russell Lowell
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What men call luck Is the prerogative of valiant souls, The fealty life pays its rightful kings.
James Russell Lowell
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Over our manhood bend the skies; Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies; With our faint hearts the mountain strives, Its arms outstretched, the druid wood Waits with its benedicite And to our ages drowsy blood Still shouts the inspiring sea.
James Russell Lowell
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It seems to me that the bane of our country is a profession of faith either with no basis of real belief, or with no proper examination of the grounds on which the creed is supposed to rest.
James Russell Lowell
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It is mediocrity which makes laws and sets mantraps and spring-guns in the realm of free song, saying thus far shalt thou go and no further.
James Russell Lowell
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All birds during the pairing season become more or less sentimental, and murmur soft nothings in a tone very unlike the grinding-organ repetition and loudness of their habitual song. The crow is very comical as a lover; and to hear him trying to soften his croak to the proper Saint-Preux standard has something the effect of a Mississippi boatman quoting Tennyson.
James Russell Lowell
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And each glad, obedient planet like a golden shuttle sings Through the web which Time is weaving in his never-resting loom
James Russell Lowell
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Quote of the day
Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.
Faith Baldwin
James Russell Lowell
Creative Commons
Born:
February 22, 1819
Died:
August 12, 1891
(aged 72)
Bio:
James Russell Lowell was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the Fireside Poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets who rivaled the popularity of British poets.
Known for:
The Biglow papers (1848)
The Vision of Sir Launfal (1848)
Among My Books (1870)
A Fable for Critics (1848)
The Poems Of James Russell Lowell
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