Emma Lazarus Quotes

• Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

  Emma Lazarus

  Inspirational, Freedom, Tired

  "The New Colossus" l. 10 (1883).

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• Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

  Emma Lazarus

  Tired, Civilization, Urbanization

  "The New Colossus" l. 10 (1883).

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• Until we are all free, we are none of us free.

  Emma Lazarus

  Marginalization

  Emma Lazarus (1987). “An Epistle to the Hebrews”, Jewish Historical Society of

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• Life's sharpest rapture is surcease of pain.

  Emma Lazarus

  Pain, Rapture

  Emma Lazarus (2002). “Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings”, p.178, Broadview Press

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• There is no comfort looking forth nor back, The present gives the lie to all her past.

  Emma Lazarus

  Lying, Past, Giving

  Emma Lazarus (2002). “Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings”, p.47, Broadview Press

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• My own curiosity and interest are insatiable.

  Emma Lazarus

  Curiosity, Interest, Insatiable

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• I am never going to write for the sake of writing.

  Emma Lazarus

  Writing, Sake

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• Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of exiles.

  Emma Lazarus

  Mother, New York, Sunset

  "The New Colossus" l. 1 (1883).

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• Let our first care today be the re-establishment of our physical strength, the reconstruction of our national organism, so that in future, where the respect due to us cannot be won by entreaty, it may be commanded, and where it cannot be commanded, it may be enforced.

  Emma Lazarus

  Care, May, Today

  Emma Lazarus (1987). “An Epistle to the Hebrews”, Jewish Historical Society of

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• Poetry must be simple, sensuous, or impassioned.

  Emma Lazarus

  Simple, Poetry, Impassioned

  Emma Lazarus (2002). “Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings”, p.234, Broadview Press

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• I seem to have always one little window looking but into life.

  Emma Lazarus

  Life, Littles, Window

  Obituary in Century Magazine, 1887.

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• Naught is too small and soft to turn and sting.

  Emma Lazarus

  Turns

  Emma Lazarus (2002). “Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings”, p.47, Broadview Press

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• The Jewish problem is as old as history, and assumes in each age a new form. The life or death of millions of human beings hangs upon its solution; its agitation revives the fiercest passions for good and for evil that inflame the human breast.

  Emma Lazarus

  Passion, Evil, Age

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• No man had ever heard a nightingale, When once a keen-eyed naturalist was stirred To study and define -- what is a bird.

  Emma Lazarus

  Men, Bird, Study

  Emma Lazarus (2015). “The Poems of Emma Lazarus, Volume I: Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic”, p.215, Courier Corporation

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• When angels visit earth, the messengers Of God's decree, they come as lightning, wind: Before the throne, they all are living fire.

  Emma Lazarus

  Angel, Fire, Wind

  Emma Lazarus (2002). “Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings”, p.236, Broadview Press

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• The soul, at peace, reflects the peace without, Forgetting grief as sunset skies forget The morning's transient shower.

  Emma Lazarus

  Morning, Peace, Grief

  Emma Lazarus (2015). “The Poems of Emma Lazarus, Volume I: Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic”, p.142, Courier Corporation

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• Still ours the dance, the feast, the glorious Psalm, The mystic lights of emblem, and the Word.

  Emma Lazarus

  Light, Psalms, Hanukkah

  Emma Lazarus (2015). “The Poems of Emma Lazarus, Volume II: Jewish Poems and Translations”, p.19, Courier Corporation

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• The little and the great are joined in one By God's great force. The wondrous golden sun Is linked unto the glow-worm's tiny spark; The eagle soars to heaven in his flight; And in those realms of space, all bathed in light, Soar none except the eagle and the lark.

  Emma Lazarus

  Space, Light, Eagles

  Emma Lazarus (2002). “Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings”, p.41, Broadview Press

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• Jews are the intensive form of any nationality whose language and customs they adopt.

  Emma Lazarus

  Language, Form, Jew

  Emma Lazarus (2015). “The Poems of Emma Lazarus, Volume I: Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic”, p.28, Courier Corporation

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• Kindle the taper like the steadfast star
  Ablaze on evening's forehead o'er the earth,
  And add each night a lustre till afar
  An eightfold splendor shine above thy hearth.

  Emma Lazarus

  Stars, Night, Shining

  Emma Lazarus, John Hollander (2005). “Selected Poems”, p.87, Library of America

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• Thick February mists cling heavily To the dead earth and to each leafless tree, And closer down upon the hilltops draw, Dull forecasts there of bright, sure-coming spring; Yet the heart gathers hope and strange delight From this dear, unlovely, wished-for sight Of leaden-misted twilights lengthening.

  Emma Lazarus

  Spring, Twilight, Heart

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• Thou two-faced year, Mother of Change and Fate...

  Emma Lazarus

  Mother, Fate, Years

  Emma Lazarus (2014). “The Poems of Emma Lazarus, Volume II: Jewish Poems and Translations”, p.22, Courier Corporation

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