171 quotes
You hear that boy laughing?—you think he’s all fun;
But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done;
The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,
And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all.
The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859)
Even in common people, conceit has the virtue of making them cheerful; the man who thinks his wife, his baby, his house, his horse, his dog, and himself severally unequalled, is almost sure to be a good-humored person, though liable to be tedious at times.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!
As vessels starting from ports thousands of miles apart pass close to each other in the naked breadths of the ocean, nay, sometimes even touch in the dark.
Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you don't make it of wood, you must make it of words...
The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872)
I talk half the time to find out my own thoughts, as a school-boy turns his pockets inside out to see what is in them. One brings to light all sorts of personal property he had forgotten in his inventory.
The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872)
Scientific knowledge, even in the most modest persons, has mingled with it a something which partakes of insolence. Absolute, peremptory facts are bullies, and those who keep company with them are apt to get a bullying habit of mind.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day?
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
On Thee we fling our burdening woe,
O love Divine, forever dear:
Content to suffer, while we know,
Living and dying, Thou art near!
The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859)
Wake in our breast the living fires,
The holy faith that warmed our sires;
Thy hand hath made our nation free;
To die for her is serving Thee.
Grant us Thy truth to make us free,
And kindling hearts that burn for Thee,
Till all Thy living altars claim
One holy light, one heavenly flame.
The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859)
Stop not, unthinking, every friend you meet
To spin your wordy fabric in the street;
While you are emptying your colloquial pack,
The fiend Lumbago jumps upon his back.
Behold—not him we knew!
This was the prison which his soul looked through.
Logic is logic. That's all I say.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1919)
I try his head occasionally as housewives try eggs,— give it an intellectual shake and hold it up to the light, so to speak, to see if it has life in it, actual or potential, or only contains lifeless albumen.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
The men of facts wait their turn in grim silence, with that slight tension about the nostrils which the consciousness of carrying a "settler" in the form of a fact or a revolver gives the individual thus armed.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
It is by little things that we know ourselves; a soul would very probably mistake itself for another, when once disembodied, were it not for individual experiences which differ from those of others only in details seemingly trifling.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
The creative action is not voluntary at all, but automatic; we can only put the mind into the proper attitude, and wait for the wind, that blows where it listeth, to breathe over it. Thus the true state of creative genius is allied to reverie, or dreaming.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Poets are never young, in one sense. Their delicate ear hears the far-off whispers of eternity, which coarser souls must travel towards for scores of years before their dull sense is touched by them. A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859)
"I suppose you are an entomologist?"
"Not quite so ambitious as that, sir. I should like to put my eyes on the individual entitled to that name. No man can be truly called an entomologist, sir; the subject is too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp".
The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872)