Quote

Men have their intellectual ancestry, and the likeness of some one of them is forever unexpectedly flashing out in the features of a descendant, it may be after a gap of several centuries. In the parliament of the present every man represents a constituency of the past.

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
Past
Gaps
Flashing
May
Centuries
Unexpectedly
Every
Features
Likeness
Men
Several
Ancestry
Intellectual
Descendants
Present
Parliament
Century
Originality
Descendant
Forever
Represents
Constituency

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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All thoughtful men are solitary and original in themselves.
James Russell Lowell
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What visionary tints the year puts on, When falling leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, tremulous hair!
James Russell Lowell
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In creating, the only hard thing is to begin: a grass blade's no easier to make than an oak.
James Russell Lowell
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To be young is surely the best, if the most precarious, gift of life.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
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
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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
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Those who know the truth are not equal to those who love it Confucius All truth is safe and nothing else is safe, but he who keeps back truth, or withholds it from men, from motives of expediency, is either a coward or a criminal.
James Russell Lowell
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Silence is sorrow's best food.
James Russell Lowell
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Through aisles of long-drawn centuries my spirit walks in thought.
James Russell Lowell
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Our seasons have no fixed returns, Without our will they come and go At noon our sudden summer burns, Ere sunset all is snow.
James Russell Lowell
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Truth is quite beyond the reach of satire. There is so brave a simplicity in her that she can no more be made ridiculous than an oak or a pine.
James Russell Lowell
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His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, But hern went pity-Zekle.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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The ultimate result of protecting fools from their folly is to fill the planet full of fools.
James Russell Lowell
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A weed is no more than a flower in disguise.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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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
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Winds wanders, and dews drip earthward Rains fall, suns rise and set Earth whirls, and all but to prosper A poor little violet.
James Russell Lowell
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The quiet tenderness of Chaucer, where you almost seem to hear the hot tears falling, and the simple choking words sobbed out.
James Russell Lowell