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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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James Russell Lowell
Age: 72 †
Born: 1819
Born: February 22
Died: 1891
Died: August 12
Diplomat
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Poet
Writer
Cambridge
Massachusetts
Telling
Weight
Weighing
Lasts
Grain
Last
Precisely
Real
Scales
Every
Sensitive
Life
Dust
Constantly

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As one lamp lights another, nor grows less,So nobleness enkindleth nobleness.
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No price is set on the lavish summer June may be had by the poorest comer.
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Suddenly all the sky is hid As with the shutting of a lid, One by one great drops are falling Doubtful and slow, Down the pane they are crookedly crawling, And the wind breathes low Slowly the circles widen on the river, Widen and mingle, one and all Here and there the slenderer flowers shiver, Struck by an icy rain-drop’s fall.
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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!
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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!
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Ah, men do not know how much strength is in poise, That he goes the farthest who goes far enough.
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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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Love lives on, and hath a power to bless when they who loved are hidden in the grave.
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The sentimentalist does not think of what he does so much as of what the world will think of what he does.
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But better far it is to speak One simple word, which now and then Shall waken their free nature in the weak And friendless sons of men.
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The green grass floweth like a stream Into the oceans's blue.
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To educate the intelligence is to expand the horizon of its wants and desires.
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Democracy is nothing more than an experiment in government, more likely to succeed in a new soil, but likely to be tried in all soils, which must stand or fall on its own merits as others have done before it. For there is no trick of perpetual motion in politics any more than in mechanics.
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The Don Quixote of one generation may live to hear himself called the savior of society by the next.
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Those who love are but one step from heaven.
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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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Folks never understand the folks they hate.
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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.
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Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified.
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No man can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself.
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