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How little inventiveness there is in man, Grave copier of copies.

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
Invention
Littles
Little
Men
Copiers
Inventiveness
Copies
Grave
Graves

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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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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Truth is quite beyond the reach of satire. There is so brave a simplicity in her that she can no more be made ridiculous than an oak or a pine.
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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A sneer is the weapon of the weak. Like other devil's weapons, it is always cunningly ready to our hand, and there is more poison in the handle than in the point.
James Russell Lowell
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I don't believe in principle, but I do in interest.
James Russell Lowell
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The Don Quixote of one generation may live to hear himself called the savior of society by the next.
James Russell Lowell
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All thoughtful men are solitary and original in themselves.
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
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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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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
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A word once vulgarized can never be rehabilitated.
James Russell Lowell
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Not what we give, but what we share, for the gift without the giver is bare.
James Russell Lowell
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That pernicious sentiment, Our country, right or wrong.
James Russell Lowell
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Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do that day, which must be done, whether you like it or not.
James Russell Lowell
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Winds wanders, and dews drip earthward Rains fall, suns rise and set Earth whirls, and all but to prosper A poor little violet.
James Russell Lowell
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Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,- Yet that scaffold sways the Future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
James Russell Lowell
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Children are God's Apostles, sent forth, day by day, to preach of love, and hope, and peace.
James Russell Lowell
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The only conclusive evidence of a man's sincerity is that he gives himself for a principle. Words, money, all things else, are comparatively easy to give away but when a man makes a gift of his daily life and practice, it is plain that the truth, whatever it may be, has taken possession of him.
James Russell Lowell
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Most men make the voyage of life as if they carried sealed orders which they were not to open till they were fairly in mid-ocean.
James Russell Lowell
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Our seasons have no fixed returns, Without our will they come and go At noon our sudden summer burns, Ere sunset all is snow.
James Russell Lowell