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

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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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One learns more metaphysics from a single temptation than from all the philosophers.
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Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.
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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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I don't believe in principle, but I do in interest.
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Slow are the steps of freedom, but her feet turn never backward.
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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.
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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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In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.
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It is by presence of mind in untried emergencies that the native metal of man is tested.
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But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet. Lessen like sound of friends departing feet And death is beautiful as feet of friend. Coming with welcome at our journey's end.
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It is the vain endeavor to make ourselves what we are not that has strewn history with so many broken purposes and lives left in the rough.
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Men! whose boast it is that ye Come of fathers brave and free, If there breathe on earth a slave, Are ye truly free and brave?
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Analysis is carried into everything. Even Deity is subjected to chemical tests.
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Ah, in this world, where every guiding thread Ends suddenly in the one sure centre, death, The visionary hand of Might-have-been Alone can fill Desire's cup to the brim!
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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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Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons.
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Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide, In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side Some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight, And the choice goes by forever, ’twixt that darkness and that light.
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Aspiration sees only one side of every question possession many.
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The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment.
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