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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.

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
Life
Originals
Original
Rise
Tradition
Eternal
Takes
Better
Thing

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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Reading Chaucer is like brushing through the dewy grass at sunrise.
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When I was a beggarly boy, And lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend nor a toy, But I had Aladdin's lamp.
James Russell Lowell
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There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one, Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on.
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All thoughtful men are solitary and original in themselves.
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Fate loves best such syllables as are sweet and sonorous on the tongue.
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Each day the world is born anew for him who takes it rightly.
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Whoever can endure unmixed delight, whoever can tolerate music and painting and poetry all in one, whoever wishes to be rid of thought and to let the busy anvils of the brain be silent for a time, let him read in the Faery Queen.
James Russell Lowell
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So we're all right, an' I, for one, Don't think our cause'll lose in vally By rammin' Scriptur' in our gun, An' gittin' Natur' for an ally.
James Russell Lowell
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Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.
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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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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It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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No sincere desire of doing good need make an enemy of a single human being that philanthropy has surely a flaw in it which cannot sympathize with the oppressor equally as with the oppressed.
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A weed is no more than a flower in disguise, Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes.
James Russell Lowell
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I who still pray at morning and at eve Thrice in my life perhaps have truly prayed, Thrice stirred below conscious self Have felt that perfect disenthrallment which is God.
James Russell Lowell
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They have rights who dare maintain them.
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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What a man pays for bread and butter is worth its market value, and no more. What he pays for love's sake is gold indeed, which has a lure for angels' eyes, and rings well upon God's touchstone.
James Russell Lowell
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To be young is surely the best, if the most precarious, gift of life.
James Russell Lowell