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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
Soul
Forward
Destinies
Enough
Works
Wherein
Great
Present
Footprint
Never
Forever
Clay
Men
Looking
Souls
Age
Indeed
Common
Mere
Petrified
Future
Destiny
Footprints
More quotes by James Russell Lowell
Behind the dim unknown, Standeth God with the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
James Russell Lowell
Who knows whither the clouds have fled? In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, The heart forgets its sorrow and ache.
James Russell Lowell
Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving.
James Russell Lowell
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
It is not without reason that fame is awarded only after death. The cloud-dust of notoriety which follows and envelops the men who drive with the wind bewilders contemporary judgment.
James Russell Lowell
A man is old when he can pass an apple orchard and not remember the stomachache.
James Russell Lowell
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
A sneer is the weapon of the weak.
James Russell Lowell
Life is a sheet of paper white / Whereon each one of us may write / His word or two, and then comes night.
James Russell Lowell
We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage.
James Russell Lowell
New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.
James Russell Lowell
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
And I honor the man who is willing to sink half his present repute for the freedom to think, and, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t' other half for the freedom to speak.
James Russell Lowell
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
Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof.
James Russell Lowell
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
That love for one, from which there doth not spring Wide love for all, is but a worthless thing.
James Russell Lowell
Did man e'er live Saw priest or woman yet forgive?
James Russell Lowell
No mud can soil us but the mud we throw.
James Russell Lowell
The riches of scholarship, the benignities of literature, defy fortune and outlive calamity. They are beyond the reach of thief or moth or rust. As they cannot be inherited, so they cannot, be alienated.
James Russell Lowell
