171 quotes
You inherit your notions from a set of priests that had no wives and no children, or none to speak of, and so let their humanity die out of them.
Elsie Venner (1859)
Day hath put on his jacket, and around
His burning bosom buttoned it with stars.
I have always considered my face a convenience rather than an ornament.
Vain? Let it be so! Nature was her teacher,
What if a lovely and unsistered creature
Loved her own harmless gift of pleasing feature.
When darkness gathers over all.
And the last tottering pillars fall,
Take the poor dust Thy mercy warms.
And mould it into heavenly forms.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)
Nobody talks much that doesn't say unwise things, — things he did not mean to say; as no person plays much without striking a false note sometimes.
The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859)
His home! the Western giant smiles,
And twirls the spotty globe to find it;
This little speck, the British Isles?
’Tis but a freckle,—never mind it.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Soft is the breath of a maiden's Yes:
Not the light gossamer stirs with less;
But never a cable that holds so fast
Through all the battles of wave and blast.
Call him not old whose visionary brain
Holds o’er the post its undivided reign,
For him in vain the envious seasons roll,
Who bears eternal summer in this soul.
The Old Player (1861)
A general flavor of mild decay.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Don't ever think the poetry is dead in an old man because his forehead is wrinkled, or that his manhood has left him when his hand trembles! If they ever were there, they are there still!
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable. Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else,—very rarely to those who say to themselves, "Go to, now, let us be a celebrated individual!"
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
But Memory blushes at the sneer,
And Honor turns with frown defiant,
And Freedom, leaning on her spear,
Laughs louder than the laughing giant.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
It cannot be repeated too often that the safety of great wealth with us lies in obedience to the new version of the Old World axiom—Richesse oblige.
Whatever comes from the brain carries the hue of the place it came from, and whatever comes from the heart carries the heat and color of its birthplace.
The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859)
Science is the topography of ignorance.
When the last reader reads no more.
Cupid "the little greatest enemy."
I love to hear thine earnest voice,
Wherever thou art hid. * *
Thou say'st an undisputed thing
In such a solemn way.
I should like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a gorilla, that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of.