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Men! whose boast it is that ye Come of fathers brave and free, If there breathe on earth a slave, Are ye truly free and brave?

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
Men
Slave
Brave
Whose
Truly
Free
Boast
Father
Fathers
Earth
Breathe
Come
Slavery

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Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes, - they were souls that stood alone, While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone, Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine, By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design.
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No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself, who would not exchange the finest show for the poorest reality, who does not so love his work that he is not only glad to give himself for it, but finds rather a gain than a sacrifice in the surrender.
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There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.
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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?
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The flowers or weeds that spring up tomorrow are in the seeds we sow today. The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.
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Like streams that keep a summer mind Snow-hid in Jenooary.
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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.
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They are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three.
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Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons.
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One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.
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Earth's noblest thing,-a woman perfected.
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There are two kinds of genius. The first and highest may be said to speak out of the eternal to the present, and must compel its age to understand it the second understands its age, and tells it what it wishes to be told.
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Blessed are they who have nothing to say and who cannot be persuaded to say it.
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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
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One learns more metaphysics from a single temptation than from all the philosophers.
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.
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In creating, the only hard thing is to begin: a grass blade's no easier to make than an oak.
James Russell Lowell
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If youth be a defect, it is one that we outgrow only too soon.
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A profound common sense is the best genius for statesmanship.
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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.
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