171 quotes
Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day, like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.
The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859)
The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the center of each and every town or city.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Life as we call it, is nothing but the edge of the boundless ocean of existence when it comes upon soundings.
Leverage is everything,—was what I used to say;—don't begin to pry till you have got the long arm on your side.
Elsie Venner (1859)
Now habit is a labor-saving invention which enables a man to get along with less fuel,—that is all; for fuel is force.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Science is a good piece of furniture for a man to have in an upper chamber, provided he has common sense on the ground floor.
Some of the sharpest men in argument are notoriously unsound in judgment.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used, till they are seasoned.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power; that is all.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Knowledge—it excites prejudices to call it science—is advancing as irresistibly, as majestically, as remorselessly as the ocean moves in upon the shore.
The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872)
Though fortune scowl, though prudence interfere,
One thing is certain: Love will triumph here!
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
I find that the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.
Talk about it as much as you like,—one's breeding shows itself nowhere more than in his religion.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.
The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872)
Why should we be more shy of repeating ourselves than the spring be tired of blossoms or the night of stars?
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
You can hire logic, in the shape of a lawyer, to prove anything that you want to prove.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
People that make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Everything is twice as large, measured on a three-year-old's three-foot scale as on a thirty-year-old's six-foot scale.
The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872)
The great delusion of mankind is in supposing that to be individual and exceptional which is universal and according to law.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
How many have withered and wasted under as slow a torment in the walls of that larger Inquisition which we call Civilization!
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)