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The future works out great men's destinies The present is enough for common souls, Who, never looking forward, are indeed Mere clay wherein the footprints of their age Are petrified forever.

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
Age
Indeed
Common
Mere
Petrified
Future
Destiny
Footprints
Soul
Forward
Destinies
Enough
Works
Wherein
Great
Present
Footprint
Never
Forever
Clay
Men
Looking
Souls

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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Life is constantly weighing us in very sensitive scales, and telling every one of us precisely what his real weight is to the last grain of dust.
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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.
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True freedom is to share All the chains our brothers wear, And, with heart and hand, to be Earnest to make others free!
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Freedom is the only law which genius knows.
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It is good To lengthen to the last a sunny mood.
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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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I would hardly change the sorrowful words of the poets for their glad ones. Tears dampen the strings of the lyre, but they grow the tensor for it, and ring even the clearer and more ravishingly.
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The very gnarliest and hardest of hearts has some musical strings in it but they are tuned differently in every one of us.
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All thoughts that mold the age begin deep down within the primitive soul.
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And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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They have rights who dare maintain them.
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I who still pray at morning and at eve Thrice in my life perhaps have truly prayed, Thrice stirred below conscious self Have felt that perfect disenthrallment which is God.
James Russell Lowell
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Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how.
James Russell Lowell
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The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accursed Man is more than Constitutions better rot beneath the sod, Than be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to God.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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A sneer is the weapon of the weak. Like other devil's weapons, it is always cunningly ready to our hand, and there is more poison in the handle than in the point.
James Russell Lowell
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There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one, Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on.
James Russell Lowell
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A sneer is the weapon of the weak.
James Russell Lowell
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But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet. Lessen like sound of friends departing feet And death is beautiful as feet of friend. Coming with welcome at our journey's end.
James Russell Lowell