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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
Rise
Tradition
Eternal
Takes
Better
Thing
Life
Originals
Original

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For only by unlearning Wisdom comes.
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The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change.
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Silence is sorrow's best food.
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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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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.
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To be young is surely the best, if the most precarious, gift of life.
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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.
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We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage.
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The material of thought re-acts upon the thought itself.
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Keats longed for fame, but longed above all to deserve it.
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Freedom is the only law which genius knows.
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All thoughtful men are solitary and original in themselves.
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The English Puritans pulled down church and state to rebuild Zion on the ruins, and all the while it was not Zion, but America, they were building.
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A man is old when he can pass an apple orchard and not remember the stomachache.
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Darkness is strong, and so is Sin, But surely God endures forever!
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All thoughts that mold the age begin deep down within the primitive soul.
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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.
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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.
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O visionary world, condition strange, Where naught abiding is but only change.
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Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.
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