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

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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That cause is strong which has, not a multitude, but one strong man behind it.
James Russell Lowell
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Faith in God, faith in man, faith in work: this is the short formula in which we may sum up the teachings of the founders of New England,--a creed ample enough for this life and the next.
James Russell Lowell
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A nature wise With finding in itself the types of all, With watching from the dim verge of the time What things to be are visible in the gleams Thrown forward on them from the luminous past, Wise with the history of its own frail heart, With reverence and sorrow, and with love, Broad as the world, for freedom and for man.
James Russell Lowell
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While tenderness of feeling and susceptibility to generous emotions are accidents of temperament, goodness is an achievement of the will and a quality of the life.
James Russell Lowell
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It is only the intellect that can be thoroughly and hideously wicked. It can forget everything in the attainment of its ends. The heart recoils in its retired some drops of childhood's dew still linger, defying manhood's fiery noon.
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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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The pale and quiet moon Makes her calm forehead bare, And the last fragments of the storm, Like shattered rigging from a fight at sea, Silent and few, are drifting over me.
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Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.
James Russell Lowell
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The pine is the mother of legends.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, But hern went pity-Zekle.
James Russell Lowell
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A stray hair, by its continued irritation, may give more annoyance than a smart blow.
James Russell Lowell
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Wealth may be an excellent thing, for it means power, and it means leisure, it means liberty.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change.
James Russell Lowell
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Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.
James Russell Lowell
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Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, First pledge of blithesome May, Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold.
James Russell Lowell
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To win the secret of a weed's plain heart.
James Russell Lowell
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That pernicious sentiment, Our country, right or wrong.
James Russell Lowell
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The ash her purple drops forgivingly And sadly, breaking not the general hush The maple swamps glow like a sunset sea, Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze, Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer burns his brush.
James Russell Lowell