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

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide.
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There are two kinds of genius. The first and highest may be said to speak out of the eternal to the present, and must compel its age to understand it the second understands its age, and tells it what it wishes to be told.
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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Whom the heart of man shuts out, Sometimes the heart of God takes in, And fences them all round about With silence mid the worlds loud din.
James Russell Lowell
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Borrowed garments never keep one warm.
James Russell Lowell
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Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.
James Russell Lowell
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Aspiration sees only one side of every question possession many.
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Silence is sorrow's best food.
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Wut 's words to them whose faith an' truth On war's red techstone rang true metal Who ventered life an' love an' youth For the gret prize o' death in battle?
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Slow are the steps of freedom, but her feet turn never backward.
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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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Better one bite at forty, of truths bitter rind, than the hot wine that gushed from the vintage of twenty.
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There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.
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'T is heaven alone that is given away 'T is only God may be had for the asking.
James Russell Lowell
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Behind the dim unknown, Standeth God with the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
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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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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Over our manhood bend the skies Against our fallen and traitor lives The great winds utter prophecies With our faint hearts the mountain strives, Its arms outstretched, the druid wood Waits with its benedicite And to our age’s drowsy blood Still shouts the inspiring sea.
James Russell Lowell
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He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, and not progress, the highest lesson in statecraft.
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.
James Russell Lowell