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And I honor the man who is willing to sink half his present repute for the freedom to think, and, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t' other half for the freedom to speak.

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
Freedom
Risk
Speak
Present
Strong
Willing
Thought
Liberty
Repute
Men
Wisdom
Sink
Think
Causes
Weak
Thinking
Law
Honor
Half
Cause

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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He gives us the very quintessence of perception,-the clearly crystalized precipitation of all that is most precious in the ferment of impression after the impertinent and obtrusive particulars have evaporated from the memory.
James Russell Lowell
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Good luck is the willing handmaid of upright, energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.
James Russell Lowell
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In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.
James Russell Lowell
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And what they dare to dream of, date to do.
James Russell Lowell
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The wisest man could ask no more of fate Than to be simple, modest, manly, true, Safe from the many, honored by the few Nothing to court in Church, or World, or State, But inwardly in secret to be great.
James Russell Lowell
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Human nature has a much greater genius for sameness than for originality.
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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There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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Attention is the stuff that memory is made of, and memory is accumulated genius.
James Russell Lowell
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What a man pays for bread and butter is worth its market value, and no more. What he pays for love's sake is gold indeed, which has a lure for angels' eyes, and rings well upon God's touchstone.
James Russell Lowell
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The English Puritans pulled down church and state to rebuild Zion on the ruins, and all the while it was not Zion, but America, they were building.
James Russell Lowell
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Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime. Not failure, but low aim is crime.
James Russell Lowell
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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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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.
James Russell Lowell
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Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide, In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side Some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight, And the choice goes by forever, ’twixt that darkness and that light.
James Russell Lowell
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It is only the intellect that can be thoroughly and hideously wicked. It can forget everything in the attainment of its ends. The heart recoils in its retired some drops of childhood's dew still linger, defying manhood's fiery noon.
James Russell Lowell
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To be young is surely the best, if the most precarious, gift of life.
James Russell Lowell
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Who knows whither the clouds have fled? In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, The heart forgets its sorrow and ache.
James Russell Lowell
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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