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

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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Fortune is the rod of the weak, and the staff of the brave.
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To put more faith in lies and hate than truth and love, is the true atheism.
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There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds.
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Greatly begin. Though thou have time, but for a line, be that sublime. Not failure, but low aim is crime.
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Nature fits all her children with something to do, he who would write and can't write, can surely review.
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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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It is not without reason that fame is awarded only after death. The cloud-dust of notoriety which follows and envelops the men who drive with the wind bewilders contemporary judgment.
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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The soil out of which such men as he are made is good to be born on, good to live on, good to die for and to be buried in.
James Russell Lowell
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The purely Great Whose soul no siren passion could unsphere, Thou nameless, now a power and mixed with fate.
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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Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof it is temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.
James Russell Lowell
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There is no work of genius which has not been the delight of mankind, no word of genius to which the human heart and soul have not sooner or later responded.
James Russell Lowell
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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.
James Russell Lowell
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God is not dumb, that he should speak no more If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor.
James Russell Lowell
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The pale and quiet moon Makes her calm forehead bare, And the last fragments of the storm, Like shattered rigging from a fight at sea, Silent and few, are drifting over me.
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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Metaphor is no argument, though it be sometimes the gunpowder to drive one home, and imbed it in the memory.
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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Humbleness is always grace always dignity
James Russell Lowell