Quote

They are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three.

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
Three
Slave
Two
Hatred
Scoffing
Truth
Weak
Shrink
Right
Choose
Shrinks
Must
Silence
Slaves
Needs
Rather
Fallen
Think
Fear
Abuse
Thinking
Speak
Dare

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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Those who know the truth are not equal to those who love it Confucius All truth is safe and nothing else is safe, but he who keeps back truth, or withholds it from men, from motives of expediency, is either a coward or a criminal.
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His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, But hern went pity-Zekle.
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No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself, who would not exchange the finest show for the poorest reality, who does not so love his work that he is not only glad to give himself for it, but finds rather a gain than a sacrifice in the surrender.
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All thoughts that mold the age begin deep down within the primitive soul.
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In the scale of the destinies, brawn will never weigh so mach as brain.
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'T is heaven alone that is given away 'T is only God may be had for the asking.
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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.
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It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is, and what shifts we make to escape thinking. There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds.
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Not as all other women are Is she that to my soul is dear Her glorious fancies come from far, Beneath the silver evening star, And yet her heart is ever near.
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It is curious for one who studies the action and reaction of national literature on each other, to see the humor of Swift and Sterne and Fielding, after filtering through Richter, reappear in Carlyle with a tinge of Germanism that makes it novel, alien, or even displeasing, as the case may be, to the English mind.
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A word once vulgarized can never be rehabilitated.
James Russell Lowell
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The sentimentalist does not think of what he does so much as of what the world will think of what he does.
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No mud can soil us but the mud we throw.
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Ye come and go incessant we remain Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot, Of faith so nobly realized as this.
James Russell Lowell
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Stern men with empires in their brains.
James Russell Lowell
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Those who love are but one step from heaven.
James Russell Lowell
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Over our manhood bend the skies Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies With our faint hearts the mountain strives, Its arms outstretched, the druid wood Waits with its benedicite And to our age’s drowsy blood Still shouts the inspiring sea.
James Russell Lowell
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And what they dare to dream of, date to do.
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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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