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True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean it is not memory but judgment.

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
Exist
Memories
Knowing
Knowledge
Scholarship
True
Consists
Mean
Memory
Things
Judging
Judgment

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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I willingly confess to so great a partiality for trees as tempts me to respect a man in exact proportion to his respect for them.
James Russell Lowell
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Who's not sat tense before his own heart's curtain.
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There is only one thing better than tradition and that is the original and eternal life out of which all tradition takes its rise.
James Russell Lowell
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We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage.
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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.
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It is the rooted instinct in men to admire what is better and more beautiful than themselves.
James Russell Lowell
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Fate loves best such syllables as are sweet and sonorous on the tongue.
James Russell Lowell
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Evil springs up, and flowers, and bears no seed, And feeds the green earth with its swift decay, Leaving it richer for the growth of truth.
James Russell Lowell
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The soil out of which such men as he are made is good to be born on, good to live on, good to die for and to be buried in.
James Russell Lowell
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True freedom is to share All the chains our brothers wear, And, with heart and hand, to be Earnest to make others free!
James Russell Lowell
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Light is the symbol of truth.
James Russell Lowell
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Those who know the truth are not equal to those who love it Confucius All truth is safe and nothing else is safe, but he who keeps back truth, or withholds it from men, from motives of expediency, is either a coward or a criminal.
James Russell Lowell
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The child is not mine as the first was, I cannot sing it to rest, I cannot lift it up fatherly And bliss it upon my breast Yet it lies in my little one's cradle And sits in my little one's chair, And the light of the heaven she's gone to Transfigures its golden hair.
James Russell Lowell
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Nature fits all her children with something to do, he who would write and can't write, can surely review.
James Russell Lowell
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No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself, who would not exchange the finest show for the poorest reality, who does not so love his work that he is not only glad to give himself for it, but finds rather a gain than a sacrifice in the surrender.
James Russell Lowell
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Winds wanders, and dews drip earthward Rains fall, suns rise and set Earth whirls, and all but to prosper A poor little violet.
James Russell Lowell
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A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.
James Russell Lowell
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Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how.
James Russell Lowell
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The pressure of public opinion is like the pressure of the atmosphere you can't see it - but all the same, it is sixteen pounds to the square inch.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
James Russell Lowell