223 quotes
There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge,
Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge.
A Fable for Critics (1848)
Behold the whole huge earth sent to me hebdomadally in a brown paper wrapper.
Put golden padlocks on Truth's lips, be callous as ye will,
From soul to soul, o'er all the world, leaps one electric thrill.
Ez to my princerples, I glory
In hevin' nothin' o' the sort.
The Biglow Papers (1848)
His heart kep' goin' pity-pat,
But hern went pity-Zekle.
The Biglow Papers (1848)
I don't believe in princerple,
But oh I du in interest.
The Biglow Papers (1848)
It ["The Ancient Mariner"] is marvellous in its mastery over that delightfully fortuitous inconsequence that is the adamantine logic of dreamland.
Got the ill name of augurs, because they were bores.
A Fable for Critics (1848)
Our Pilgrim stock wuz pethed with hardihood.
Greatly begin! Though thou have time
But for a line, be that sublime—
Not failure, but low aim is crime.
'Tain't a knowin' kind of cattle
Thet is ketched with mouldy corn.
Thet tells the story! Thet's wut we shall git
By tryin' squirtguns on the burnin' Pit;
For the day never comes when it'll du
To kick on dooty like a worn-out shoe.
The Biglow Papers (1848)
Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.
Literary Essays, vol. I (1864)
Nature fits all her children with something to do,
He who would write and can't write, can surely review.
A Fable for Critics (1848)
'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves
Of a legendary virtue carved upon our father's graves.
Ef you want peace, the thing you've gut tu du
Is jes' to show you're up to fightin', tu.
The Biglow Papers (1848)
There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.
On Democracy (1884)
The right to be a cussed fool
Is safe from all devices human,
It's common (ez a gin'l rule)
To every critter born of woman.
The Biglow Papers (1848)
'T was kin' o' kingdom-come to look
On sech a blessed cretur.
The Biglow Papers (1848)
All kin' o' smily round the lips,
An' teary round the lashes.
The Biglow Papers (1848)