61 quotes
All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called “facts.” They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. It has come to you over a new route, by a new and express train of associations.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
How many people live on the reputation of the reputation they might have made!
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Each woman virtually summons every man to show cause why he doth not love her.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Man has his will,—but woman has her way!
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Boston State-house is the hub of the solar system. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crow-bar.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, — and the fools know it.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
He must be a poor creature that does not often repeat himself.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
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)
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)
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)
Though fortune scowl, though prudence interfere,
One thing is certain: Love will triumph here!
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
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)
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)