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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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James Russell Lowell
Age: 72 †
Born: 1819
Born: February 22
Died: 1891
Died: August 12
Diplomat
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Poet
Writer
Cambridge
Massachusetts
Nothing
Safe
Manly
Many
Asks
Wisest
Great
Secret
Modesty
Men
State
Honored
World
Church
Modest
Simple
Simplicity
True
Court
States
Fate
Inwardly

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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I love her with a love as still As a broad river's peaceful might, Which by high tower and lowly mill, Goes wandering at its own will, And yet does ever flow aright.
James Russell Lowell
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Where Church and State are habitually associated, it is natural that minds, even of a high order, should unconsciously come to regard religion as only a subtler mode of police.
James Russell Lowell
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The green grass floweth like a stream Into the oceans's blue.
James Russell Lowell
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O visionary world, condition strange, Where naught abiding is but only change.
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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Not suffering, but faint heart, is worst of woes.
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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Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do that day, which must be done, whether you like it or not.
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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It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dangerous, but the revolts of the intelligence.
James Russell Lowell
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Good heavens, of what un costly material is our earthly happiness composed... if we only knew it. What incomes have we not had from a flower, and how unfailing are the dividends of the seasons.
James Russell Lowell
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The pine is the mother of legends.
James Russell Lowell
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A sneer is the weapon of the weak.
James Russell Lowell
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The only conclusive evidence of a man's sincerity is that he gives himself for a principle. Words, money, all things else, are comparatively easy to give away but when a man makes a gift of his daily life and practice, it is plain that the truth, whatever it may be, has taken possession of him.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
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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Our American republic will endure only as long as the ideas of the men who founded it continue dominant.
James Russell Lowell
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A ginooine statesman should be on his guard, if he must hev beliefs, not to b'lieve 'em too hard.
James Russell Lowell
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The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change.
James Russell Lowell
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Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.
James Russell Lowell