Quote

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

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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
Seem
Past
Beckons
Seems
Leans
Back
Fairer
Look
Inaccessible
Looks
Tower
Always
Towers
Things
Longing

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Great truths are portions of the soul of man Great souls are portions of eternity.
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Behind the dim unknown, Standeth God with the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
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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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Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
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But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet. Lessen like sound of friends departing feet And death is beautiful as feet of friend. Coming with welcome at our journey's end.
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Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us.
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To make the common marvelous is the test of genius.
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How I do love the earth. I feel it thrill under my feet. I feel somehow as if it were conscious of my love, as if something passed into my dancing blood from it.
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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 profound common sense is the best genius for statesmanship.
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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.
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Large charity doth never soil, but only whitens soft white hands.
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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.
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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.
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That cause is strong which has, not a multitude, but one strong man behind it.
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All thoughtful men are solitary and original in themselves.
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Humbleness is always grace always dignity
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Men! whose boast it is that ye Come of fathers brave and free, If there breathe on earth a slave, Are ye truly free and brave?
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