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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.
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
Make
Rough
Vain
Broken
Purpose
Lives
History
Strewn
Left
Purposes
Many
Endeavor
More quotes by James Russell Lowell
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.
James Russell Lowell
The stiff rails were softened to swan's-down, and still fluttered down the snow.
James Russell Lowell
In all literary history there is no such figure as Dante, no such homogeneousness of life and works, such loyalty to ideas, such sublime irrecognition of the unessential.
James Russell Lowell
Fashion being the art of those who must purchase notice at some cheaper rate than that of being beautiful, loves to do rash and extravagant things. She must be forever new, or she becomes insipid.
James Russell Lowell
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.
James Russell Lowell
New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.
James Russell Lowell
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.
James Russell Lowell
A weed is no more than a flower in disguise, Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes.
James Russell Lowell
If youth be a defect, it is one that we outgrow only too soon.
James Russell Lowell
I love her with a love as still As a broad river's peaceful might, Which by high tower and lowly mill, Goes wandering at its own will, And yet does ever flow aright.
James Russell Lowell
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide.
James Russell Lowell
A sneer is the weapon of the weak.
James Russell Lowell
Who is it needs such flawless shafts as fate? What archer of his arrows is so choice, or hits the white so surely?
James Russell Lowell
Taste is the next gift to genius.
James Russell Lowell
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.
James Russell Lowell
To win the secret of a weed's plain heart.
James Russell Lowell
Aspiration sees only one side of every question possession many.
James Russell Lowell
I willingly confess to so great a partiality for trees as tempts me to respect a man in exact proportion to his respect for them.
James Russell Lowell
Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.
James Russell Lowell
It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is...
James Russell Lowell
