"And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light."
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Quote collection
James Russell Lowell quotes (page 14 of 23)
453 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
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"There is a law of neutralization of forces, which hinders bodies from sinking beyond a certain depth in the sea; but in the ocean of baseness, the deeper we get, the easier the sinking."
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"Our American republic will endure only as long as the ideas of the men who founded it continue dominant."
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"Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide, In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight, And the choice goes by forever, ’twixt that darkness and that light."
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"Tyrants are but the spawn of Ignorance, Begotten by the slaves they trample on."
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"History is clarified experience."
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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."
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"No mud can soil us but the mud we throw."
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"Life is constantly weighing us in very sensitive scales, and telling every one of us precisely what his real weight is to the last grain of dust."
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"To be young is surely the best, if the most precarious, gift of life."
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"A great part of human suffering has its root in the nature of man, and not in that of his institutions."
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"Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving."
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"The riches of scholarship, the benignities of literature, defy fortune and outlive calamity. They are beyond the reach of thief or moth or rust. As they cannot be inherited, so they cannot, be alienated."
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"The English Puritans pulled down church and state to rebuild Zion on the ruins, and all the while it was not Zion, but America, they were building."
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"All birds during the pairing season become more or less sentimental, and murmur soft nothings in a tone very unlike the grinding-organ repetition and loudness of their habitual song. The crow is very comical as a lover; and to hear him trying to soften his croak to the proper Saint-Preux standard has something the effect of a Mississippi boatman quoting Tennyson."
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"Two meanings have our lightest fantasies,- One of the flesh, and of the spirit one."
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"Again, now, now, again Plashes the rain in heavy gouts, The crinkled lightning Seems ever brightening... And loud and long Again the thunder shouts His battle-song, - One quivering flash, One wildering crash, Followed by silence dead and dull, As if the cloud, let go, Leapt bodily below To whelm the earth in one mad overthrow, And then a total lull."
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"Fastidiousness is only another word for egotism; and all men who know not where to look for truth save in the narrow well of self will find their own image at the bottom, and mistake it for what they are seeking."
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"All free governments, whatever their name, are in reality governments by public opinion ; and it is on the quality of this public opinion that their prosperity depends. It is, therefore, their first duty to purify the element from which they draw the breath of life."
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