“There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.”

—  James Russell Lowell

On Democracy (6 October 1884)
Context: There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat. And in this case, also, the prudent will prepare themselves to encounter what they cannot prevent. Some people advise us to put on the brakes, as if the movement of which we are conscious were that of a railway train running down an incline. But a metaphor is no argument, though it be sometimes the gunpowder to drive one home and imbed it in the memory.

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James Russell Lowell175
American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat 1819–1891

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