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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
Two
Kind
Bends
Breaks
Kinds
Weakness
Destiny
Break
More quotes by James Russell Lowell
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
How little inventiveness there is in man, Grave copier of copies.
James Russell Lowell
Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, and cries reproachful: Was it then my praise, and not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth I claim of thee the promise of thy youth.
James Russell Lowell
Life is constantly weighing us in very sensitive scales, and telling every one of us precisely what his real weight is to the last grain of dust.
James Russell Lowell
Behind the dim unknown, Standeth God with the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
James Russell Lowell
He who keeps his faith only, cannot be discrowned.
James Russell Lowell
Endurance is the crowning quality.
James Russell Lowell
When I was a beggarly boy, And lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend nor a toy, But I had Aladdin's lamp.
James Russell Lowell
I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.
James Russell Lowell
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!
James Russell Lowell
An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
James Russell Lowell
The flowers or weeds that spring up tomorrow are in the seeds we sow today. The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.
James Russell Lowell
What men call luck Is the prerogative of valiant souls, The fealty life pays its rightful kings.
James Russell Lowell
Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, First pledge of blithesome May, Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold.
James Russell Lowell
Slow are the steps of freedom, but her feet turn never backward.
James Russell Lowell
The fireflies o'er the meadow In pulses come and go.
James Russell Lowell
They are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three.
James Russell Lowell
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.
James Russell Lowell
Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons.
James Russell Lowell
Ye come and go incessant we remain Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot, Of faith so nobly realized as this.
James Russell Lowell
