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'Pity without rigor would be cowardly egotism, mere sentimentality.'Matthew Pearl
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Longfellow smiled. "A great part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles, my dear Lowell, but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory.Matthew Pearl
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Believe that when I am at once a man's friend I am always so-nor is it so very hard to bring me to it. And though a man may enjoy himself in being my enemy, he cannot make me HIS for longer than I wish. Good afternoon." Lowell had a way of leaving a conversation with the other person needing more from him.Matthew Pearl
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A man was leaning idly against an elm.... The man, who towered over the poet even at his slanting angle, too old for a student and too worn for a faculty member, stared at him with the familiar, insatiable gleam of the literary admirer.Matthew Pearl
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..It is the one time Dante calls such explicit attention to the idea of contrapasso-a word for which we have no exact translation, no precise definition in English, because the word in itself is its definition.. Well, my dear Longfellow, I would say countersuffering .. the notion that each sinner must be punished by continuing the damage of his own sin against him.. just as these Schismatics are cut apart.. .Matthew Pearl