14 quotes
Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor.
The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872)
It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872)
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)
Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.
The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872)
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)
We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible.
The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872)
The foolishest book is a kind of leaky boat on a sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow.
The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872)
For there we loved, and where we love is home,
Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts,
Though o'er us shine the jasper-lighted dome:—
The chain may lengthen, but it never parts!
The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872)
There are a good many real miseries in life that we cannot help smiling at, but they are the smiles that make wrinkles and not dimples.
The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872)
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)
"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)
If we are only as the potter's clay
Made to be fashioned as the artist wills,
And broken into shards if we offend
The eye of Him who made us, it is well.
The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872)
The first thing naturally when one enters a scholar's study or library, is to look at his books. One gets a notion very speedily of his tastes and the range of his pursuits by a glance round his book-shelves.
The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872)