Quote

Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.

James Russell Lowell

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James Russell Lowell
Age: 72 †
Born: 1819
Born: February 22
Died: 1891
Died: August 12
Diplomat
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Poet
Writer
Cambridge
Massachusetts
Poor
Compromise
Often
Commitment
Makes
Wise
Statesmanship
Political
Wisdom
Expedient
Good
Almost
Unwise
Politics
Umbrella
Sure
Roof
Party
Temporary

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Freedom needs all her poets it is they Who give her aspirations wings, And to the wiser law of music sway Her wild imaginings.
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But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet. Lessen like sound of friends departing feet And death is beautiful as feet of friend. Coming with welcome at our journey's end.
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Praise follows truth afar off, and only overtakes her at the grave plausibility clings to her skirts and holds her back till then
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Good heavens, of what un costly material is our earthly happiness composed... if we only knew it. What incomes have we not had from a flower, and how unfailing are the dividends of the seasons.
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Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving.
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I tell ye wut, my judgment is you're pooty sure to fail, Ez long 'z the head keeps turnin' back for counsel to the the tail.
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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.
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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.
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Here come the hum the golden bees Underneath full blossomed trees, At once with glowing fruit and flowers crowned.
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Not failure, but low aim, is crime.
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The green grass floweth like a stream Into the oceans's blue.
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God is not dumb, that he should speak no more If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor.
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Metaphor is no argument, though it be sometimes the gunpowder to drive one home, and imbed it in the memory.
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Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us.
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Faith in God, faith in man, faith in work: this is the short formula in which we may sum up the teachings of the founders of New England,--a creed ample enough for this life and the next.
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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.
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There is no work of genius which has not been the delight of mankind, no word of genius to which the human heart and soul have not sooner or later responded.
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The ash her purple drops forgivingly And sadly, breaking not the general hush The maple swamps glow like a sunset sea, Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze, Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer burns his brush.
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Each day the world is born anew for him who takes it rightly.
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No sincere desire of doing good need make an enemy of a single human being that philanthropy has surely a flaw in it which cannot sympathize with the oppressor equally as with the oppressed.
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