Quote

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.

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
Mind
Escape
Make
Curious
Thinking
Minds
Habit
Tyrannical
Alone
Shifts
Reading
Bore
Left
Bores
Much
Dread

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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 ash her purple drops forgivingly And sadly, breaking not the general hush The maple swamps glow like a sunset sea, Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze, Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer burns his brush.
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Take winter as you find him, and he turns out to be a thoroughly honest fellow with no nonsense in him, which is a great comfort in the long-run.
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Fortune is the rod of the weak, and the staff of the brave.
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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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Christ was the first true democrat that ever breathed, as the old dramatist Dekkar said he was the first true gentleman.
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What a man pays for bread and butter is worth its market value, and no more. What he pays for love's sake is gold indeed, which has a lure for angels' eyes, and rings well upon God's touchstone.
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Sentiment is intellectualized emotion emotion precipitated, as it were, in pretty crystals by the fancy.
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All thoughts that mold the age begin deep down within the primitive soul.
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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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Fate loves best such syllables as are sweet and sonorous on the tongue.
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In the earliest ages science was poetry, as in the later poetry has become science.
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He who keeps his faith only, cannot be discrowned.
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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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History is clarified experience.
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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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All free governments, whatever their name, are in reality governments by public opinion and it is on the quality of this public opinion that their prosperity depends. It is, therefore, their first duty to purify the element from which they draw the breath of life.
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Metaphor is no argument, though it be sometimes the gunpowder to drive one home, and imbed it in the memory.
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Borrowed garments never keep one warm.
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Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving.
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