I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.
James Russell LowellRead
To me it seems not unreasonable to find a re-enforcement of optimism, a renewal of courage and hope, in the modern theory that man has mounted to what he is from the lowest step of potentiality, through toilsome grades of ever-expanding existence, even thought it have been by a spiral stairway, mainly dark or dusty, with loop-holes at long intervals only, and these granting but a narrow and one-sided view.
More from James Russell Lowell
All quotes βThe foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.
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Not failure, but low aim, is crime.
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Good luck is the willing handmaid of upright, energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.
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Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.
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Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.
James Russell LowellRead