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Metaphor is no argument, though it be sometimes the gunpowder to drive one home, and imbed it in the memory.

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
Sometimes
Gunpowder
Metaphor
Drive
Memory
Argument
Memories
Though
Home

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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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.
James Russell Lowell
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Attention is the stuff that memory is made of, and memory is accumulated genius.
James Russell Lowell
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God is not dumb, that he should speak no more If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor.
James Russell Lowell
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Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,- Yet that scaffold sways the Future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
James Russell Lowell
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Communism means barbarism.
James Russell Lowell
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The purely Great Whose soul no siren passion could unsphere, Thou nameless, now a power and mixed with fate.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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Our American republic will endure only as long as the ideas of the men who founded it continue dominant.
James Russell Lowell
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It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is...
James Russell Lowell
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Not suffering, but faint heart, is worst of woes.
James Russell Lowell
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It is good To lengthen to the last a sunny mood.
James Russell Lowell
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Making one object, in outward or inward nature, more holy to a single heart is reward enough for a life for the more sympathies we gain or awaken for what is beautiful, by so much deeper will be our sympathy for that which is most beautiful,--the human soul!
James Russell Lowell
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They are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three.
James Russell Lowell
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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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A stray hair, by its continued irritation, may give more annoyance than a smart blow.
James Russell Lowell
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There is no work of genius which has not been the delight of mankind, no word of genius to which the human heart and soul have not sooner or later responded.
James Russell Lowell
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And I honor the man who is willing to sink half his present repute for the freedom to think, and, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t' other half for the freedom to speak.
James Russell Lowell
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Ah, men do not know how much strength is in poise, That he goes the farthest who goes far enough.
James Russell Lowell
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Fate loves best such syllables as are sweet and sonorous on the tongue.
James Russell Lowell
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Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, and cries reproachful: Was it then my praise, and not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth I claim of thee the promise of thy youth.
James Russell Lowell