Emma Lazarus — a remark

From the V2Melody quotations library — share the card, then explore the poet and poems below.

“I seem to have always one little window looking out into life. No such cure for pessimism as a severe illness; the simplest pleasures are enough — to breathe the air and see the sun.”

Finding renewed appreciation for ordinary life after illness · Remark in final months, as recorded in obituary (1888)

Emma Lazarus

About Emma Lazarus

Emma Lazarus

22 July 1849–19 November 1887

Emma Lazarus was born in New York City on 22 July 1849 and died there on 19 November 1887, only thirty-eight years later. Her name is now inseparable from “The New Colossus,” the sonnet whose plea for the world’s “tired,” “poor,” and “huddled masses” has become the verbal companion to the Statue of Liberty. Yet the…

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Poems by Emma Lazarus

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More remarks by Emma Lazarus

“I cannot resist the impulse of expressing to you my extreme disappointment at finding you have so far modified the enthusiastic estimate you held of my literary labors as to refuse me a place in the large and miscellaneous collection of poems you have just edited. I find myself treated with absolute contempt in the very quarter where I had been encouraged to build my fondest hopes.”

Expressing wounded pride after exclusion from an anthology · Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson (1874)

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