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The quiet tenderness of Chaucer, where you almost seem to hear the hot tears falling, and the simple choking words sobbed out.

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
Words
Hot
Fall
Falling
Seems
Tears
Quiet
Sobbed
Seem
Chaucer
Hear
Choking
Almost
Choke
Simple
Tenderness

More quotes by 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.
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God is not dumb, that he should speak no more If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor.
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Keats longed for fame, but longed above all to deserve it.
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The one thing finished in this hasty world.
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Ah, in this world, where every guiding thread Ends suddenly in the one sure centre, death, The visionary hand of Might-have-been Alone can fill Desire's cup to the brim!
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All thoughtful men are solitary and original in themselves.
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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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No mud can soil us but the mud we throw.
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One learns more metaphysics from a single temptation than from all the philosophers.
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There is surely room for yet another schoolmaster when a score of seers advertise themselves in Boston newspapers.
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In the scale of the destinies, brawn will never weigh so mach as brain.
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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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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.
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A word once vulgarized can never be rehabilitated.
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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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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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There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.
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The New World's sons from England's breast we drew Such milk as bids remember whence we came, Proud of her past wherefrom our future grew, This window we inscribe with Raleigh's fame.
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In life's small things be resolute and great To keep thy muscle trained Know'st thou when Fate Thy measure takes, or when she'll say to thee, I find thee worthy do this deed for me?
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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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