Quote

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

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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
Claims
Fiercely
Love
Ideals
Foe
Cry
Cries
Praise
Pursued
Promise
Soft
Prove
Claim
Wooed
Youth
Ideal
Beset
Loved
Thee
Confronts

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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What men call luck Is the prerogative of valiant souls, The fealty life pays its rightful kings.
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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.
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Life is the jailer, death the angel sent to draw the unwilling bolts and set us free.
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Stories now, to suit a public taste, must be half epigram, half pleasant vice.
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Better one bite at forty, of truths bitter rind, than the hot wine that gushed from the vintage of twenty.
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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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Slow are the steps of freedom, but her feet turn never backward.
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Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.
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A great part of human suffering has its root in the nature of man, and not in that of his institutions.
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It is only by instigation of the wrongs of men that what are called the Rights of Man become turbulent and dangerous.
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The one thing finished in this hasty world.
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Making one object, in outward or inward nature, more holy to a single heart is reward enough for a life for the more sympathies we gain or awaken for what is beautiful, by so much deeper will be our sympathy for that which is most beautiful,--the human soul!
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It is not without reason that fame is awarded only after death. The cloud-dust of notoriety which follows and envelops the men who drive with the wind bewilders contemporary judgment.
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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Fate loves best such syllables as are sweet and sonorous on the tongue.
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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In all literary history there is no such figure as Dante, no such homogeneousness of life and works, such loyalty to ideas, such sublime irrecognition of the unessential.
James Russell Lowell
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So we're all right, an' I, for one, Don't think our cause'll lose in vally By rammin' Scriptur' in our gun, An' gittin' Natur' for an ally.
James Russell Lowell
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A nature wise With finding in itself the types of all, With watching from the dim verge of the time What things to be are visible in the gleams Thrown forward on them from the luminous past, Wise with the history of its own frail heart, With reverence and sorrow, and with love, Broad as the world, for freedom and for man.
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Freedom is the only law which genius knows.
James Russell Lowell