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Fortune is the rod of the weak, and the staff of the brave.

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
Fortune
Weak
Literature
Bravery
Staff
Brave

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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Ah, in this world, where every guiding thread Ends suddenly in the one sure centre, death, The visionary hand of Might-have-been Alone can fill Desire's cup to the brim!
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Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified.
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Democracy is nothing more than an experiment in government, more likely to succeed in a new soil, but likely to be tried in all soils, which must stand or fall on its own merits as others have done before it. For there is no trick of perpetual motion in politics any more than in mechanics.
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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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The fireflies o'er the meadow In pulses come and go.
James Russell Lowell
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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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If youth be a defect, it is one that we outgrow only too soon.
James Russell Lowell
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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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It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is...
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Metaphor is no argument, though it be sometimes the gunpowder to drive one home, and imbed it in the memory.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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It is curious for one who studies the action and reaction of national literature on each other, to see the humor of Swift and Sterne and Fielding, after filtering through Richter, reappear in Carlyle with a tinge of Germanism that makes it novel, alien, or even displeasing, as the case may be, to the English mind.
James Russell Lowell
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For only by unlearning Wisdom comes.
James Russell Lowell
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In creating, the only hard thing is to begin: a grass blade's no easier to make than an oak.
James Russell Lowell
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In life's small things be resolute and great To keep thy muscle trained Know'st thou when Fate Thy measure takes, or when she'll say to thee, I find thee worthy do this deed for me?
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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Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how.
James Russell Lowell
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One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.
James Russell Lowell
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Poetry is something to make us wiser and better, by continually revealing those types of beauty and truth, which God has set in all men's souls.
James Russell Lowell
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A nature wise With finding in itself the types of all, With watching from the dim verge of the time What things to be are visible in the gleams Thrown forward on them from the luminous past, Wise with the history of its own frail heart, With reverence and sorrow, and with love, Broad as the world, for freedom and for man.
James Russell Lowell