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Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.

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
Cannot
Rote
Make
Repeating
Men
Doth
Worn
Save
Plan
Plans
Nature
Dote

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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Wut 's words to them whose faith an' truth On war's red techstone rang true metal Who ventered life an' love an' youth For the gret prize o' death in battle?
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
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Ef you want peace, the thing you've gut to du Is jes' to show you're up to fightin', tu.
James Russell Lowell
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The English Puritans pulled down church and state to rebuild Zion on the ruins, and all the while it was not Zion, but America, they were building.
James Russell Lowell
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They have rights who dare maintain them.
James Russell Lowell
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One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.
James Russell Lowell
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No price is set on the lavish summer June may be had by the poorest comer.
James Russell Lowell
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The first lesson of life is to burn our own smoke that is, not to inflict on outsiders our personal sorrows and petty morbidness, not to keep thinking of ourselves as exceptional cases.
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.
James Russell Lowell
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We look at death through the cheap-glazed windows of the flesh, and believe him the monster which the flawed and cracked glass represents him.
James Russell Lowell
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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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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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There is only one thing better than tradition and that is the original and eternal life out of which all tradition takes its rise.
James Russell Lowell
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Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide.
James Russell Lowell
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The sentimentalist does not think of what he does so much as of what the world will think of what he does.
James Russell Lowell
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One learns more metaphysics from a single temptation than from all the philosophers.
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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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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That pernicious sentiment, Our country, right or wrong.
James Russell Lowell
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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!
James Russell Lowell