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A poet must need be before his own age, to be even with posterity

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
Posterity
Poet
Age
Need
Must
Needs
Even

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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Slow are the steps of freedom, but her feet turn never backward.
James Russell Lowell
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A great part of human suffering has its root in the nature of man, and not in that of his institutions.
James Russell Lowell
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Behind the dim unknown, Standeth God with the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
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
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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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It is curious for one who studies the action and reaction of national literature on each other, to see the humor of Swift and Sterne and Fielding, after filtering through Richter, reappear in Carlyle with a tinge of Germanism that makes it novel, alien, or even displeasing, as the case may be, to the English mind.
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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Not but wut abstract war is horrid, I sign to thet with all my heart, But civilysation doos git forrid Sometimes, upon a powder-cart.
James Russell Lowell
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While tenderness of feeling and susceptibility to generous emotions are accidents of temperament, goodness is an achievement of the will and a quality of the life.
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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Did man e'er live Saw priest or woman yet forgive?
James Russell Lowell
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The pressure of public opinion is like the pressure of the atmosphere you can't see it - but all the same, it is sixteen pounds to the square inch.
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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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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Truth always has a bewitching savor of newness in it, and novelty at the first taste recalls that original sweetness to the tongue but alas for him who would make the one a substitute for the other.
James Russell Lowell
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No sincere desire of doing good need make an enemy of a single human being that philanthropy has surely a flaw in it which cannot sympathize with the oppressor equally as with the oppressed.
James Russell Lowell
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The snow had begun in the gloaming, and busily all the night had been heaping field and highway with a silence deep and white.
James Russell Lowell
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In the storm, like a prophet o'ermaddened, Thou singest and tossest thy branches Thy heart with the terror is gladdened, Thou forebodest the dread avalanches.... In the calm thou o'erstretchest the valleys With thine arms, as if blessings imploring, Like an old king led forth from his palace, When his people to battle are pouring.
James Russell Lowell
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Stories now, to suit a public taste, must be half epigram, half pleasant vice.
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