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The greatest homage we can pay to truth, is to use it.
James Russell Lowell -
In vain we call old notions fudge,And bend our conscience to our dealing;The Ten Commandments will not budge,And stealing will continue stealing.
James Russell Lowell
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It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is, and what shifts we make to escape thinking. There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds.
James Russell Lowell -
The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers is that which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience.
James Russell Lowell -
Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.
James Russell Lowell -
The wisest man could ask no more of FateThan to be simple, modest, manly, true,Safe from the Many - honored by the Few;To count as naught in World or Church or State;But inwardly in secret to be great.
James Russell Lowell -
Good luck is the willing handmaid of a upright and energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.
James Russell Lowell -
Nature, they say, doth dote,And cannot make a manSave on some worn-out plan,Repeating us by rote.
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 -
You've gut to git up airlyEf you want to take in God.
James Russell Lowell -
There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business.
James Russell Lowell -
Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man;He’s ben on all sides thet give places or pelf;But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,-He’s ben true to one party, an’ thet is himself.
James Russell Lowell -
The child is not mine as the first was,I cannot sing it to rest,I cannot lift it up fatherlyAnd bliss it upon my breast;Yet it lies in my little one's cradleAnd sits in my little one's chair,And the light of the heaven she's gone toTransfigures its golden hair.
James Russell Lowell -
Our slender life runs rippling by, and glidesInto the silent hollow of the past;What is there that abidesTo make the next age better for the last?
James Russell Lowell
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The traitor to humanity is the traitor most accursed;Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod,Than to be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to God!
James Russell Lowell -
One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.
James Russell Lowell -
The thing we long for, that we areFor one transcendent moment.
James Russell Lowell -
Poetry is something to make us wiser and better, by continually revealing those types of beauty and truth, which God has set in all men's souls.
James Russell Lowell -
Death is delightful. Death is dawn, The waking from a weary night Of fevers unto truth and light.
James Russell Lowell -
A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.
James Russell Lowell
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And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days.
James Russell Lowell -
Soft-heartedness, in times like these,Shows sof'ness in the upper story.
James Russell Lowell -
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 -
There are two kinds of weakness, that which breaks and that which bends.
James Russell Lowell