Quote

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

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Good heavens, of what un costly material is our earthly happiness composed... if we only knew it. What incomes have we not had from a flower, and how unfailing are the dividends of the seasons.
James Russell Lowell
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Nature fits all her children with something to do, he who would write and can't write, can surely review.
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The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment.
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Blessed are they who have nothing to say and who cannot be persuaded to say it.
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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.
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They are slaves who fear to speak, for the fallen and the weak.
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.
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In creating, the only hard thing is to begin: a grass blade's no easier to make than an oak.
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How I do love the earth. I feel it thrill under my feet. I feel somehow as if it were conscious of my love, as if something passed into my dancing blood from it.
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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.
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What means this glory round our feet, The Magi mused, more bright than morn! And voices chanted clear and sweet, To-day the Prince of Peace is born.
James Russell Lowell
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Folks never understand the folks they hate.
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Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
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.
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There is surely room for yet another schoolmaster when a score of seers advertise themselves in Boston newspapers.
James Russell Lowell
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Good luck is the willing handmaid of upright, energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.
James Russell Lowell
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Old gold has a civilizing virtue which new gold must grow old to be capable of secreting.
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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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