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Never did Poesy appear So full of heaven to me, as when I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear To the lives of coarsest men.

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
Men
Pride
Poetry
Full
Heaven
Lives
Poesy
Fear
Pierce
Never
Appear
Would
Saws

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Fools, when their roof-tree falls, think it doomsday.
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Here come the hum the golden bees Underneath full blossomed trees, At once with glowing fruit and flowers crowned.
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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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Silence is sorrow's best food.
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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.
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The material of thought re-acts upon the thought itself.
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In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.
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The question of common sense is always: 'what is it good for?' - a question which would abolish the rose and be answered triumphantly by the cabbage.
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It is the rooted instinct in men to admire what is better and more beautiful than themselves.
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Large charity doth never soil, but only whitens soft white hands.
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He gives us the very quintessence of perception,-the clearly crystalized precipitation of all that is most precious in the ferment of impression after the impertinent and obtrusive particulars have evaporated from the memory.
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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.
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The English Puritans pulled down church and state to rebuild Zion on the ruins, and all the while it was not Zion, but America, they were building.
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They are slaves who fear to speak, for the fallen and the weak.
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The dandelions and buttercups gild all the lawn: the drowsy bee stumbles among the clover tops, and summer sweetens all to me.
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Incredulity robs us of many pleasures, and gives us nothing in return.
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When I was a beggarly boy, And lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend nor a toy, But I had Aladdin's lamp.
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No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself.
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The Don Quixote of one generation may live to hear himself called the savior of society by the next.
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The devil loves nothing better than the intolerance of reformers.
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