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The one thing finished in this hasty world.

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
World
Hasty
Finished
Thing

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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A man is old when he can pass an apple orchard and not remember the stomachache.
James Russell Lowell
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Life is the jailer, death the angel sent to draw the unwilling bolts and set us free.
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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Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime. Not failure, but low aim is crime.
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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For only by unlearning Wisdom comes.
James Russell Lowell
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Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.
James Russell Lowell
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A sneer is the weapon of the weak.
James Russell Lowell
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Those who know the truth are not equal to those who love it Confucius All truth is safe and nothing else is safe, but he who keeps back truth, or withholds it from men, from motives of expediency, is either a coward or a criminal.
James Russell Lowell
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What men call luck Is the prerogative of valiant souls, The fealty life pays its rightful kings.
James Russell Lowell
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Ah, men do not know how much strength is in poise, That he goes the farthest who goes far enough.
James Russell Lowell
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Whoever can endure unmixed delight, whoever can tolerate music and painting and poetry all in one, whoever wishes to be rid of thought and to let the busy anvils of the brain be silent for a time, let him read in the Faery Queen.
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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Poetry is something to make us wiser and better, by continually revealing those types of beauty and truth, which God has set in all men's souls.
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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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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I don't believe in principle, but I do in interest.
James Russell Lowell
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Life may be given in many ways, and loyalty to truth be sealed as bravely in the closet as the field.
James Russell Lowell
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In the earliest ages science was poetry, as in the later poetry has become science.
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