Quote

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
Many
Asks
Wisest
Great
Secret
Modesty
Men
State
Honored
World
Church
Modest
Simple
Simplicity
True
Court
States
Fate
Inwardly
Nothing
Safe
Manly

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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The pine is the mother of legends.
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Not suffering, but faint heart, is worst of woes.
James Russell Lowell
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Earth's noblest thing,-a woman perfected.
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The flowers or weeds that spring up tomorrow are in the seeds we sow today. The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.
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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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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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Ah, men do not know how much strength is in poise, That he goes the farthest who goes far enough.
James Russell Lowell
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A stray hair, by its continued irritation, may give more annoyance than a smart blow.
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!
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True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean it is not memory but judgment.
James Russell Lowell
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As one lamp lights another, nor grows less,So nobleness enkindleth nobleness.
James Russell Lowell
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In the scale of the destinies, brawn will never weigh so mach as brain.
James Russell Lowell
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Poetry is something to make us wiser and better, by continually revealing those types of beauty and truth, which God has set in all men's souls.
James Russell Lowell
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Democracy is that form of society, no matter what its political classification, in which every man has a chance and knows that he has it.
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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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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Fate loves the fearless.
James Russell Lowell
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To win the secret of a weed's plain heart.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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Not only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not.
James Russell Lowell