|
|
No, my friends, I go (always other things being equal) for the
man that inherits family traditions and the cumulative humanities
of at least four or five generations.
Topic: Ancestry
Source: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (ch. I)
|
The crack-brained bobolink courts his crazy mate,
Poised on a bulrush tipsy with his weight.
Topic: Bobolinks
Source: Spring
|
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.
Topic: Boston
Source: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (VI)
|
The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of
each and every town or city.
Topic: Cities
Source: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (VI)
|
Everything is twice as large, measured on a three-year-old's
three-foot scale on a thirty-year-old's six-foot scale.
Topic: Comparisons
Source: Poet at the Breakfast Table (I)
|
And when you stick on conversation's burs,
Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs.
Topic: Conversation
Source: A Rhymed Lesson--Urania
|
Of course everybody likes and respects self-made men. It is a
great deal better to be made in that way than not to be made at
all.
Topic: Education
Source: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (l. 1)
|
Day hath put on his jacket, and around
His burning bosom buttoned it with stars.
Topic: Evening
Source: Evening
|
Ay, here her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky.
Topic: Flags
Source: A Metrical Essay
|
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the God of storms,
The lightning and the gale.
Topic: Flags
Source: A Metrical Essay
|
A man must get a thing before he can forget it.
Topic: Forgetfulness
Source: Medical Essays (300)
|
The wind blows out, the bubble dies;
The spring entomb'd in autumn lies;
The dew dries up; the star is shot;
The flight is past--and man forgot.
Topic: Forgetfulness
Source: Medical Essays (300)
|
The hat is the ultimatum moriens of respectability.
Topic: Hatters
Source: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (VIII)
|
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.
Topic: Hatters
Source: The Last Leaf
|
There are three wicks you know to the lamp of a man's life:
brain, blood, and breath. Press the brain a little, its light
goes out, followed by both the others. Stop the heart a minute,
and out go all three of the wicks. Choke the air out of the
lungs, and presently the fluid ceases to supply the other centres
of flame, and all is soon stagnation, cold, and darkness.
Topic: Health
Source: Professor at the Breakfast Table (XI)
|
I never dare to write
As funny as I can.
Topic: Humor
Source: The Height of the Ridiculous
|
I find that the great thing in this world is not so much where we
stand as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of
heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes
against it--but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
Topic: Innovation
Source: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
|
People that make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on
the railroad tracks.
Topic: Jesting
Source: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (I)
|
Thou art a female, Katydid!
I know it by the trill
That quivers through thy piercing notes
So petulant and shrill.
I think there is a knot of you
Beneath the hollow tree,
A knot of spinster Katydids,--
Do Katydids drink tea?
Topic: Katydids
Source: To an Insect
|
Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were
only the history of pinheads.
Topic: Libraries
Source: Poet at the Breakfast Table (VIII)
|
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.
Topic: Libraries
Source: Poet at the Breakfast Table (VIII)
|
Then there is that glorious Epicurean paradox, uttered by my
friend, the Historian in one of his flashing moments: "Give us
the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries."
Topic: Luxury
Source: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (VI)
|
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits the all.
Topic: Lying
Source: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (VI)
|
I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica could be sunk
to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind
and all the worse for the fishes.
Topic: Medicine
Source: Lecture before the Harvard Medical School
|
As vessels starting from ports thousands of miles apart pass
close to each other in the naked breadth of the ocean, nay,
sometimes even touch in the dark.
Topic: Meeting
Source: Professor at the Breakfast Table
|
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.
Topic: Misery
Source: Poet at the Breakfast Table (III)
|
Scarce one tall frigate walks the sea
Or skirts the safer shores
Of all that bore to victory
Our stout old Commodores.
Topic: Navy
Source: at a dinner given to Admiral Farragut
|
It is not often that an opinion is worth expressing, which cannot
take care of itself.
Topic: Opinion
Source: Medical Essays (211)
|
Then there is that glorious Epicurean paradox, uttered by my
friend, the Historian in one of his flashing moments: "Give us
the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries."
Topic: Paradoxes
Source: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (VI)
|
One flag, one land, one heart, one hand,
One Nation evermore!
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.,
Topic: Patriotism
Source: Voyage of the Good Ship Union--Poems of the Class of '29
|
Yes, child of suffering, thou may'st well be sure
He who ordained the Sabbath loves the poor!
Topic: Poverty
Source: Urania; or, A Rhymed Lesson (l. 325)
|
Science is the topography of ignorance.
Topic: Science
Source: Medical Essays (211)
|
The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor
its great scholars great men.
Topic: Students
Source: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (VI)
|
Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame?
A fitful tongue of leaping flame;
A giddy whirlwind's fickle gust,
That lifts a pinch of mortal dust;
A few swift years, and who can show
Which dust was Bill, and which was Joe?
Topic: Students
Source: Poems of the Class of '29--Bill and Joe (st. 7)
|
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.
Topic: Talk
Source: Urania--A Rhymed Lesson, l. 439
|
Grave is the Master's look; his forehead wears
Thick rows of wrinkles, prints of worrying cares:
Uneasy lies the heads of all that rule,
His worst of all whose kingdom is a school.
Supreme he sits; before the awful frown
That binds his brows the boldest eye goes down;
Not more submissive Israel heard and saw
At Sinai's foot the Giver of the Law.
Topic: Teaching
Source: The School Boy
|
The lengthening shadows wait
The first pale stars of twilight.
Topic: Twilight
Source: Poems of the Class of '29--Even Song (st. 6)
|
Sweet shadows of twilight! how calm their repose,
While the dewdrops fall soft in the breast of the rose!
How blest to the toiler his hour of release
When the vesper is heard with its whisper of peace!
Topic: Twilight
Source: Poems of the Class of '29--Our Banker (st. 12)
|
Our Union is river, lake, ocean, and sky:
Man breaks not the medal, when God cuts the die!
Though darkened with sulphur, though cloven with steel,
The blue arch will brighten, the waters will heal!
Topic: Unity
Source: Brother Jonathan's Lament for Sister Caroline
|
Vain? Let it be so! Nature was her teacher,
What if a lovely and unsistered creature
Loved her own harmless gift of pleasing feature.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.,
Topic: Vanity
Source: Iris, Her Book--The Professor at the Breakfast-Table (X)
|
The freeman casting, with unpurchased hand,
The vote that shakes the turrets of the land.
Topic: Voting
Source: A Metrical Essay (l. 83)
|
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.
Topic: Wealth
Source: A Moral Antipathy--Introduction
|
Little I ask; my wants are few;
I only wish a hut of stone
(A very plain brown stone will do),
That I may call my own;
And close at hand is such a one
In yonder street that fronts the sun.
Topic: Wishes
Source: Contentment
|
