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To be young is surely the best, if the most precarious, gift of life.

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
Precarious
Surely
Gift
Youth
Young
Best
Life

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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Evil springs up, and flowers, and bears no seed, And feeds the green earth with its swift decay, Leaving it richer for the growth of truth.
James Russell Lowell
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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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Folks never understand the folks they hate.
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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I love her with a love as still As a broad river's peaceful might, Which by high tower and lowly mill, Goes wandering at its own will, And yet does ever flow aright.
James Russell Lowell
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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!
James Russell Lowell
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The question of common sense is always: 'what is it good for?' - a question which would abolish the rose and be answered triumphantly by the cabbage.
James Russell Lowell
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Our seasons have no fixed returns, Without our will they come and go At noon our sudden summer burns, Ere sunset all is snow.
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?
James Russell Lowell
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A nature wise With finding in itself the types of all, With watching from the dim verge of the time What things to be are visible in the gleams Thrown forward on them from the luminous past, Wise with the history of its own frail heart, With reverence and sorrow, and with love, Broad as the world, for freedom and for man.
James Russell Lowell
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Those who love are but one step from heaven.
James Russell Lowell
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The quiet tenderness of Chaucer, where you almost seem to hear the hot tears falling, and the simple choking words sobbed out.
James Russell Lowell
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A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.
James Russell Lowell
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Not failure, but low aim, is crime.
James Russell Lowell
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Who speaks the truth stabs falsehood to the heart.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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I tell ye wut, my judgment is you're pooty sure to fail, Ez long 'z the head keeps turnin' back for counsel to the the tail.
James Russell Lowell
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Men! whose boast it is that ye Come of fathers brave and free, If there breathe on earth a slave, Are ye truly free and brave?
James Russell Lowell
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To make the common marvelous is the test of genius.
James Russell Lowell
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Freedom needs all her poets it is they Who give her aspirations wings, And to the wiser law of music sway Her wild imaginings.
James Russell Lowell