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To make the common marvelous is the test of genius.

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
Make
Marvelous
Test
Tests
Genius
Common

More quotes by James Russell Lowell

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The wisest man could ask no more of fate Than to be simple, modest, manly, true, Safe from the many, honored by the few Nothing to court in Church, or World, or State, But inwardly in secret to be great.
James Russell Lowell
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In the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking.
James Russell Lowell
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The rich man's sons inherits cares The bank may break, the factory burn, A breath may burst his bubble shares, And soft, white hands could hardly earn A living that would serve his turn.
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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I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.
James Russell Lowell
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Nature fits all her children with something to do, he who would write and can't write, can surely review.
James Russell Lowell
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But better far it is to speak One simple word, which now and then Shall waken their free nature in the weak And friendless sons of men.
James Russell Lowell
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Life is the jailer, death the angel sent to draw the unwilling bolts and set us free.
James Russell Lowell
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A poet must need be before his own age, to be even with posterity
James Russell Lowell
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Faith in God, faith in man, faith in work: this is the short formula in which we may sum up the teachings of the founders of New England,--a creed ample enough for this life and the next.
James Russell Lowell
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He who keeps his faith only, cannot be discrowned.
James Russell Lowell
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There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.
James Russell Lowell
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Fashion being the art of those who must purchase notice at some cheaper rate than that of being beautiful, loves to do rash and extravagant things. She must be forever new, or she becomes insipid.
James Russell Lowell
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True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean it is not memory but judgment.
James Russell Lowell
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The stiff rails were softened to swan's-down, and still fluttered down the snow.
James Russell Lowell
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That pernicious sentiment, Our country, right or wrong.
James Russell Lowell
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It is only the intellect that can be thoroughly and hideously wicked. It can forget everything in the attainment of its ends. The heart recoils in its retired some drops of childhood's dew still linger, defying manhood's fiery noon.
James Russell Lowell
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Humbleness is always grace always dignity
James Russell Lowell
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Never did Poesy appear So full of heaven to me, as when I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear To the lives of coarsest men.
James Russell Lowell
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The future works out great men's destinies The present is enough for common souls, Who, never looking forward, are indeed Mere clay wherein the footprints of their age Are petrified forever.
James Russell Lowell