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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
Giving
Particulars
Precious
Impression
Clearly
Precipitation
Perception
Evaporated
Memory
Ferment
Gives
Impertinent
Memories
Quintessence

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, and cries reproachful: Was it then my praise, and not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth I claim of thee the promise of thy youth.
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Attention is the stuff that memory is made of, and memory is accumulated genius.
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In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.
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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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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 ash her purple drops forgivingly And sadly, breaking not the general hush The maple swamps glow like a sunset sea, Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze, Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer burns his brush.
James Russell Lowell
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The stiff rails were softened to swan's-down, and still fluttered down the snow.
James Russell Lowell
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One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.
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It is by presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of man is tested.
James Russell Lowell
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What visionary tints the year puts on, When falling leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, tremulous hair!
James Russell Lowell
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Who speaks the truth stabs falsehood to the heart.
James Russell Lowell
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It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is, and what shifts we make to escape thinking. There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds.
James Russell Lowell
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Most men make the voyage of life as if they carried sealed orders which they were not to open till they were fairly in mid-ocean.
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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Through aisles of long-drawn centuries my spirit walks in thought.
James Russell Lowell
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Take winter as you find him, and he turns out to be a thoroughly honest fellow with no nonsense in him, which is a great comfort in the long-run.
James Russell Lowell
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To win the secret of a weed's plain heart.
James Russell Lowell
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That pernicious sentiment, Our country, right or wrong.
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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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