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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There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds.
James Russell Lowell
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True freedom is to share All the chains our brothers wear, And, with heart and hand, to be Earnest to make others free!
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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The soil out of which such men as he are made is good to be born on, good to live on, good to die for and to be buried in.
James Russell Lowell
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Children are God's Apostles, sent forth, day by day, to preach of love, and hope, and peace.
James Russell Lowell
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The riches of scholarship, the benignities of literature, defy fortune and outlive calamity. They are beyond the reach of thief or moth or rust. As they cannot be inherited, so they cannot, be alienated.
James Russell Lowell
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Here come the hum the golden bees Underneath full blossomed trees, At once with glowing fruit and flowers crowned.
James Russell Lowell
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It is quite too common a practice, both in readers and the more superficial class of critics, to judge a book by what it is not, a matter much easier to determine than what it is.
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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Certainly it is no shame to a man that he should be as nice about his country as his sweetheart, yet it would not be wise to hold everyone an enemy who could not see her with our own enchanted eyes.
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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Stories now, to suit a public taste, must be half epigram, half pleasant vice.
James Russell Lowell
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Slow are the steps of freedom, but her feet turn never backward.
James Russell Lowell
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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
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Freedom is the only law which genius knows.
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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His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, But hern went pity-Zekle.
James Russell Lowell
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The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment.
James Russell Lowell
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It was in making education not only common to all, but in some sense compulsory on all, that the destiny of the free republics of America was practically settled.
James Russell Lowell
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The flowers or weeds that spring up tomorrow are in the seeds we sow today. The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.
James Russell Lowell