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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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James Russell Lowell
Age: 72 †
Born: 1819
Born: February 22
Died: 1891
Died: August 12
Diplomat
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Poet
Writer
Cambridge
Massachusetts
Perception
Evaporated
Memory
Ferment
Gives
Impertinent
Memories
Quintessence
Giving
Particulars
Precious
Impression
Clearly
Precipitation

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It is only the intellect that can be thoroughly and hideously wicked. It can forget everything in the attainment of its ends. The heart recoils in its retired some drops of childhood's dew still linger, defying manhood's fiery noon.
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It is the vain endeavor to make ourselves what we are not that has strewn history with so many broken purposes and lives left in the rough.
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My gran'ther's rule was safer 'n 't is to crow: Don't never prophesy - onless ye know.
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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.
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Old gold has a civilizing virtue which new gold must grow old to be capable of secreting.
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Light is the symbol of truth.
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A nature wise With finding in itself the types of all, With watching from the dim verge of the time What things to be are visible in the gleams Thrown forward on them from the luminous past, Wise with the history of its own frail heart, With reverence and sorrow, and with love, Broad as the world, for freedom and for man.
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It is not without reason that fame is awarded only after death. The cloud-dust of notoriety which follows and envelops the men who drive with the wind bewilders contemporary judgment.
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The stiff rails were softened to swan's-down, and still fluttered down the snow.
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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.
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Making one object, in outward or inward nature, more holy to a single heart is reward enough for a life for the more sympathies we gain or awaken for what is beautiful, by so much deeper will be our sympathy for that which is most beautiful,--the human soul!
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A poet must need be before his own age, to be even with posterity
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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.
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'T is heaven alone that is given away 'T is only God may be had for the asking.
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God'll send the bill to you.
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It was in making education not only common to all, but in some sense compulsory on all, that the destiny of the free republics of America was practically settled.
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Not suffering, but faint heart, is worst of woes.
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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.
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The fireflies o'er the meadow In pulses come and go.
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A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.
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