Quote

No sincere desire of doing good need make an enemy of a single human being that philanthropy has surely a flaw in it which cannot sympathize with the oppressor equally as with the oppressed.

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
Humans
Sincere
Sympathize
Need
Equally
Oppressor
Needs
Surely
Flaw
Make
Single
Oppressors
Good
Enemy
Benevolence
Desire
Philanthropy
Cannot
Oppressed
Human
Flaws

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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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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.
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Each day the world is born anew for him who takes it rightly.
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Stories now, to suit a public taste, must be half epigram, half pleasant vice.
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Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime. Not failure, but low aim is crime.
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Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave.
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A wise man travels to discover himself.
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The ultimate result of protecting fools from their folly is to fill the planet full of fools.
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It is not without reason that fame is awarded only after death. The cloud-dust of notoriety which follows and envelops the men who drive with the wind bewilders contemporary judgment.
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Incredulity robs us of many pleasures, and gives us nothing in return.
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A ginooine statesman should be on his guard, if he must hev beliefs, not to b'lieve 'em too hard.
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No mud can soil us but the mud we throw.
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Borrowed garments never keep one warm.
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Life is a sheet of paper white / Whereon each one of us may write / His word or two, and then comes night.
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There are two kinds of genius. The first and highest may be said to speak out of the eternal to the present, and must compel its age to understand it the second understands its age, and tells it what it wishes to be told.
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Reading Chaucer is like brushing through the dewy grass at sunrise.
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Life is constantly weighing us in very sensitive scales, and telling every one of us precisely what his real weight is to the last grain of dust.
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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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Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote.
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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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