Quote

The first lesson of life is to burn our own smoke that is, not to inflict on outsiders our personal sorrows and petty morbidness, not to keep thinking of ourselves as exceptional cases.

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
Sorrow
Sorrows
Cases
Outsiders
Personal
Exceptional
Keep
Petty
Firsts
Burn
First
Lesson
Thinking
Smoke
Life
Lessons
Inflict

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Reading Chaucer is like brushing through the dewy grass at sunrise.
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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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How I do love the earth. I feel it thrill under my feet. I feel somehow as if it were conscious of my love, as if something passed into my dancing blood from it.
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An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
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A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.
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Be He nowhere else, God is in all that liberates and lifts, in all that humbles, sweetens, and consoles.
James Russell Lowell
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Wealth may be an excellent thing, for it means power, and it means leisure, it means liberty.
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Good heavens, of what un costly material is our earthly happiness composed... if we only knew it. What incomes have we not had from a flower, and how unfailing are the dividends of the seasons.
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The flowers or weeds that spring up tomorrow are in the seeds we sow today. The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.
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Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,- Yet that scaffold sways the Future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
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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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Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.
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One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.
James Russell Lowell
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He who keeps his faith only, cannot be discrowned.
James Russell Lowell
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In all literary history there is no such figure as Dante, no such homogeneousness of life and works, such loyalty to ideas, such sublime irrecognition of the unessential.
James Russell Lowell
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To win the secret of a weed's plain heart.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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Who knows whither the clouds have fled? In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, The heart forgets its sorrow and ache.
James Russell Lowell
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Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, First pledge of blithesome May, Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold.
James Russell Lowell
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Fortune is the rod of the weak, and the staff of the brave.
James Russell Lowell