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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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James Russell Lowell
Age: 72 †
Born: 1819
Born: February 22
Died: 1891
Died: August 12
Diplomat
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Poet
Writer
Cambridge
Massachusetts
Truth
Seeds
Feeds
Earth
Leaving
Swift
Bears
Springs
Green
Richer
Spring
Wickedness
Flower
Seed
Growth
Decay
Evil
Flowers

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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Stories now, to suit a public taste, must be half epigram, half pleasant vice.
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Ah, men do not know how much strength is in poise, That he goes the farthest who goes far enough.
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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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There is surely room for yet another schoolmaster when a score of seers advertise themselves in Boston newspapers.
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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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No price is set on the lavish summer June may be had by the poorest comer.
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The story of any one man's real experience finds its startling parallel in that of every one of us.
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We look at death through the cheap-glazed windows of the flesh, and believe him the monster which the flawed and cracked glass represents him.
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Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how.
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Whoever can endure unmixed delight, whoever can tolerate music and painting and poetry all in one, whoever wishes to be rid of thought and to let the busy anvils of the brain be silent for a time, let him read in the Faery Queen.
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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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The pine is the mother of legends.
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In creating, the only hard thing is to begin: a grass blade's no easier to make than an oak.
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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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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It is by presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of man is tested.
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There are two kinds of genius. The first and highest may be said to speak out of the eternal to the present, and must compel its age to understand it the second understands its age, and tells it what it wishes to be told.
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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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The rich man's sons inherits cares The bank may break, the factory burn, A breath may burst his bubble shares, And soft, white hands could hardly earn A living that would serve his turn.
James Russell Lowell
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And but two ways are offered to our will, Toil with rare triumph, ease with safe disgrace, The problem still for us and all of human race.
James Russell Lowell