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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.

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
Judgment
Notoriety
Wind
Cloud
Death
Follows
Reason
Contemporary
Without
Dust
Men
Drive
Clouds
Envelops
Fame
Awarded

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The pale and quiet moon Makes her calm forehead bare, And the last fragments of the storm, Like shattered rigging from a fight at sea, Silent and few, are drifting over me.
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Truth always has a bewitching savor of newness in it, and novelty at the first taste recalls that original sweetness to the tongue but alas for him who would make the one a substitute for the other.
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A great part of human suffering has its root in the nature of man, and not in that of his institutions.
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A stray hair, by its continued irritation, may give more annoyance than a smart blow.
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There is only one thing better than tradition and that is the original and eternal life out of which all tradition takes its rise.
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The purely Great Whose soul no siren passion could unsphere, Thou nameless, now a power and mixed with fate.
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In creating, the only hard thing is to begin: a grass blade's no easier to make than an oak.
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Through aisles of long-drawn centuries my spirit walks in thought.
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One learns more metaphysics from a single temptation than from all the philosophers.
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In life's small things be resolute and great To keep thy muscle trained Know'st thou when Fate Thy measure takes, or when she'll say to thee, I find thee worthy do this deed for me?
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Not as all other women are Is she that to my soul is dear Her glorious fancies come from far, Beneath the silver evening star, And yet her heart is ever near.
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Who is it needs such flawless shafts as fate? What archer of his arrows is so choice, or hits the white so surely?
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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.
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The material of thought re-acts upon the thought itself.
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What means this glory round our feet, The Magi mused, more bright than morn! And voices chanted clear and sweet, To-day the Prince of Peace is born.
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I would hardly change the sorrowful words of the poets for their glad ones. Tears dampen the strings of the lyre, but they grow the tensor for it, and ring even the clearer and more ravishingly.
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Old gold has a civilizing virtue which new gold must grow old to be capable of secreting.
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It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.
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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.
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Slow are the steps of freedom, but her feet turn never backward.
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