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There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.

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
Destiny
Break
Two
Kind
Bends
Breaks
Kinds
Weakness

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You've gut to git up airly Ef you want to take in God.
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Be He nowhere else, God is in all that liberates and lifts, in all that humbles, sweetens, and consoles.
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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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A weed is no more than a flower in disguise, Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes.
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In the storm, like a prophet o'ermaddened, Thou singest and tossest thy branches Thy heart with the terror is gladdened, Thou forebodest the dread avalanches.... In the calm thou o'erstretchest the valleys With thine arms, as if blessings imploring, Like an old king led forth from his palace, When his people to battle are pouring.
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The pine is the mother of legends.
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Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime. Not failure, but low aim is crime.
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The purely Great Whose soul no siren passion could unsphere, Thou nameless, now a power and mixed with fate.
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Taste is the next gift to genius.
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But better far it is to speak One simple word, which now and then Shall waken their free nature in the weak And friendless sons of men.
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A poet must need be before his own age, to be even with posterity
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The first lesson of life is to burn our own smoke that is, not to inflict on outsiders our personal sorrows and petty morbidness, not to keep thinking of ourselves as exceptional cases.
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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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The question of common sense is always: 'what is it good for?' - a question which would abolish the rose and be answered triumphantly by the cabbage.
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I would hardly change the sorrowful words of the poets for their glad ones. Tears dampen the strings of the lyre, but they grow the tensor for it, and ring even the clearer and more ravishingly.
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Who speaks the truth stabs falsehood to the heart.
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Our seasons have no fixed returns, Without our will they come and go At noon our sudden summer burns, Ere sunset all is snow.
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A sneer is the weapon of the weak.
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Our American republic will endure only as long as the ideas of the men who founded it continue dominant.
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In the earliest ages science was poetry, as in the later poetry has become science.
James Russell Lowell