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Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving.

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
Conniving
Jest
Fate
Seems
Life
Contriving

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Comparative criticism teaches us that moral and aesthetic defects are more nearly related than is commonly supposed.
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Freedom is the only law which genius knows.
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Not what we give, but what we share, for the gift without the giver is bare.
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O visionary world, condition strange, Where naught abiding is but only change.
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There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds.
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Our American republic will endure only as long as the ideas of the men who founded it continue dominant.
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Slow are the steps of freedom, but her feet turn never backward.
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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.
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Stern men with empires in their brains.
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Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.
James Russell Lowell
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History is clarified experience.
James Russell Lowell
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In life's small things be resolute and great To keep thy muscle trained Know'st thou when Fate Thy measure takes, or when she'll say to thee, I find thee worthy do this deed for me?
James Russell Lowell
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New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.
James Russell Lowell
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Men have their intellectual ancestry, and the likeness of some one of them is forever unexpectedly flashing out in the features of a descendant, it may be after a gap of several centuries. In the parliament of the present every man represents a constituency of the past.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
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
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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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Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified.
James Russell Lowell
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If the devil take a less hateful shape to us than to our fathers, he is as busy with us as with them.
James Russell Lowell