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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
Fate
Seems
Life
Contriving
Conniving
Jest

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.
James Russell Lowell
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Suddenly all the sky is hid As with the shutting of a lid, One by one great drops are falling Doubtful and slow, Down the pane they are crookedly crawling, And the wind breathes low Slowly the circles widen on the river, Widen and mingle, one and all Here and there the slenderer flowers shiver, Struck by an icy rain-drop’s fall.
James Russell Lowell
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Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave.
James Russell Lowell
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Fools, when their roof-tree falls, think it doomsday.
James Russell Lowell
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Better one bite at forty, of truths bitter rind, than the hot wine that gushed from the vintage of twenty.
James Russell Lowell
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We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage.
James Russell Lowell
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Christ was the first true democrat that ever breathed, as the old dramatist Dekkar said he was the first true gentleman.
James Russell Lowell
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There is no work of genius which has not been the delight of mankind, no word of genius to which the human heart and soul have not sooner or later responded.
James Russell Lowell
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Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.
James Russell Lowell
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Stern men with empires in their brains.
James Russell Lowell
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I don't believe in principle, but I do in interest.
James Russell Lowell
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But better far it is to speak One simple word, which now and then Shall waken their free nature in the weak And friendless sons of men.
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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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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Evil springs up, and flowers, and bears no seed, And feeds the green earth with its swift decay, Leaving it richer for the growth of truth.
James Russell Lowell
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God is not dumb, that he should speak no more If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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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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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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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