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Slow are the steps of freedom, but her feet turn never backward.

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
Never
Backward
Slow
Steps
Feet
Turn
Turns
Freedom

More quotes by 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.
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And but two ways are offered to our will, Toil with rare triumph, ease with safe disgrace, The problem still for us and all of human race.
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Democracy is that form of society, no matter what its political classification, in which every man has a chance and knows that he has it.
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I willingly confess to so great a partiality for trees as tempts me to respect a man in exact proportion to his respect for them.
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All thoughts that mold the age begin deep down within the primitive soul.
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Men have their intellectual ancestry, and the likeness of some one of them is forever unexpectedly flashing out in the features of a descendant, it may be after a gap of several centuries. In the parliament of the present every man represents a constituency of the past.
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The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change.
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It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.
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Children are God's Apostles, sent forth, day by day, to preach of love, and hope, and peace.
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Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified.
James Russell Lowell
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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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One learns more metaphysics from a single temptation than from all the philosophers.
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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.
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I don't believe in principle, but I do in interest.
James Russell Lowell
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Did man e'er live Saw priest or woman yet forgive?
James Russell Lowell
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I love her with a love as still As a broad river's peaceful might, Which by high tower and lowly mill, Goes wandering at its own will, And yet does ever flow aright.
James Russell Lowell
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It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dangerous, but the revolts of the intelligence.
James Russell Lowell
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It is by presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of man is tested.
James Russell Lowell
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So we're all right, an' I, for one, Don't think our cause'll lose in vally By rammin' Scriptur' in our gun, An' gittin' Natur' for an ally.
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