Chapter 1

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This etext was produced by David Widger <[email protected]>

WIDGER'S QUOTATIONS

FROM THE PROJECT GUTENBERG WORKS OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

CONTENTS:

The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table ........ [Etext #751] aofbt10.txt The Professor at the Breakfast Table ....... [Etext #2665] prabt10.txt The Poet at the Breakfast Table ............ [Etext #2666] ptabt10.txt Over the Teacups ........................... [Etext #2689] teacp10.txt Elsie Venner ............................... [Etext #2696] elsie10.txt The Guardian Angel ......................... [Etext #2697] angel10.txt A Mortal Antipathy ......................... [Etext #2698] antip10.txt Passages from an Old Volume of Life ........ [Etext #2706] pages10.txt Medical Essays ............................. [Etext #2700] medic10.txt The Entire Gutenberg Files of Holmes ....... [Etext #3252] ohent10.txt

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D.W.

WIDGER'S QUOTATIONS

THE AUTOCRAT AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE (Originally published at Project Gutenberg by David Price) [Etext #751] aofbt10.txt or aofbt10.zip

A little queer and uncertain in general aspect. A misprint kills a sensitive author A nail will pick a lock that defies hatchet and hammer Absolute, peremptory facts are bullies Advised every literary man to have a profession. Afraid of books who have not handled them from infancy Age and neglect united gradually Agreed on certain ultimata of belief Algebraic symbols of minds which have grown too weak All his geese are swans All men are bores, except when we want them All men love all women All the forms of moral excellence, except truth All want to reach old age and grumble when they get it And now we two are walking the long path in peace together Another privilege of talking is to misquote Arc in the movement of a large intellect As a child, he should have tumbled about in a library As I understand truth As to clever people's hating each other Asked Solon what made him dare to be so obstinate Assume a standard of judgment in our own minds At the mercy of every superior mind Audacious self-esteem, with good ground for it Automatic and involuntary actions of the mind Babbage's calculating machine Be very careful to whom you trust one of these keys Beautiful effects from wit,--all the prismatic colors Been in the same precise circumstances before Behave like men and gentlemen about it, if you know how. Bells which small trades-people connect with their shop-doors Better too few words, from the woman we love Bill which will render pockets a superfluity in your next suit Blank checks of intellectual bankruptcy Bowing and nodding over the music Brain often runs away with the heart's best blood Brilliant flashes--of silence! Brute beasts of the intellectual domain Bury in it beliefs, doubts, dreams, hopes, and terrors But it was in talking of Life that we came most nearly together But we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor. C'est le DERNIER pas qui co–te Called an old man for the first time Cel… va sans dire Character is distinctly shown at the age of or months. Cigar Clairvoyance which sees into things without opening them Code of finalities is a necessary condition of profitable talk Comfort is essential to enjoyment Commerce is just putting his granite foot upon them Common sense was good enough for him Common sense, as you understand it. Compare the racer with the trotter Conceit has the virtue of making them cheerful Conceit is just a natural thing to human minds Conclusion that he or she is really dull Consciousness of carrying a "settler" in the form of a fact Controversy Conversation which is suggestive rather than argumentative Conversational blank checks or counters Conversational bully Conversational fungi spring up most luxuriantly Conversational soprano Creative action is not voluntary at all Crippled souls Crow with a king-bird after him Cut your climate to your constitution Dangerous subjects Demand for intellectual labor is so enormous Did I believe in love at first sight? Differ on the fundamental principles Dishwater from the washings of English dandyism Disputing about remainders and fractions Do you ever wonder why poets talk so much about flowers? Do you know how important good jockeying is to authors? Don't believe any man ever talked like that in this world Don't ever think the poetry is dead in an old man Don't make your moral staple consist of the negative virtues Doomed to the pangs of an undeceived self-estimate Dulness is not commonly a game fish Easier to dispute it than to disprove it Easier to say this than to prove it Elysian abandonment of a huge recumbent chair. Every person's feelings have a front-door and a side-door Extra talent does sometimes make people jealous Facts always yield the place of honor, in conversation Few, if any, were ruined by drinking Flash terms for words which truly characterize their objects. Fortune had left her, sorrow had baptized her Fortune is the measure of intelligence Friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things Gambling with dice or stocks Gambling, on the great scale, is not republican Generally ruined before they became drunkards Genius in an essentially common person is detestable Gift of seeing themselves in the true light Give it an intellectual shake and hold it up to the light Give us the luxuries of life Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris Good feeling helps society to make liars of most of us Good for nothing until they have been long kept and used Got his hand up, as a pointer lifts his forefoot Governed, not by, but according to laws Grave without a stone where nothing but a man is buried Great silent-moving misery puts a new stamp on us Grow old early, if you would be old long Grow we must, if we outgrow all that we love. Habit is a labor-saving invention Hard it is for some people to get out of a room He that has once done you a kindness He who is carried by horses must deal with rogues Height of art to conceal art Her breathing was somewhat hurried and high, or thoracic Here lies buried the soul of the licentiate Pedro Garcias Hire logic, in the shape of a lawyer Hold their outspread hands over your head Holes in all her pockets Hoped he did deserve a little abuse occasionally Hopelessly dull discourse acts inductively How long will school-keeping take to kill you? Hung with moss, looking like bearded Druids Hydrostatic paradox of controversy I allow no "facts " at this table I always believed in life rather than in books I always break down when folks cry in my face I am my own son, as it seems to me I had not thought love was ever meant for me. I hate books I have lived by the sea-shore and by the mountains I have taken all knowledge to be my province I love horses I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds I replied with my usual forbearance I show my thought, another his I tell my secrets too easily when I am downhearted. I think I have not been attacked enough for it If I thought I should ever see the Alps! If so and so, we should have been this or that If they have run as well as they knew how! Il faut ne pas BRUTALISER la machine In what direction we are moving Incipit Allegoria Senectutis. Infinite ocean of similitudes and analogies Insanity Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked Intellectual companions can be found easily Is this the mighty occan?--is this all? It is by little things that we know ourselves It is pleasant to be foolish at the right time Judge men's minds by comparing with mine Keep his wit in the background Key to this side-door Knowledge and timber only useful when seasoned La main de fer sous le gant de velours Laid the egg of the Reformation which Luther hatched Laughs at times at the grand airs "Science" puts on Law of the road with regard to handsome faces Leading a string of my mind's daughters to market Leap at a single bound into celebrity Learn anything twice as easily as in my earlier days Leave your friend to learn unpleasant truths from his enemies Lecturer is public property Let us cry! Liability of all men to be elected to public office Life is maintained by the respiration of oxygen and of sentiment Life would be nothing without paper-credit Like taking the cat in your lap after holding a squirrel Listen to what others say about subjects you have studied Little great man Little muscle which knows its importance Little narrow streaks of specialized knowledge Live on the reputation of the reputation they might have made Living in a narrow world of dry habits Logic Logicians carry the surveyor's chain over the track Long illness is the real vampyrism Look through the silvered rings of the arcus senilis! Love is sparingly soluble in the words of men Love must be either rich or rosy Love-capacity is a congenital endowment Lying is unprofitable Made up your mind to do when you ask them for advice Man is father to the boy that was Man of family Man who means to be honest for a literary pickpocket Man's and a woman's dusting a library Man's first life-story shall clean him out, so to speak Mathematical fact May doubt everything to-day if I will only do it civilly Meaningless blushing Mechanical invention had exhausted itself Memory is a net Men are fools, cowards, and liars all at once Men grow sweet a little while before they begin to decay Men of facts wait their turn in grim silence Men that it weakens one to talk with an hour Men that know everything except how to make a living Men who have found new occupations when growing old Might have hired an EARTHQUAKE for less money! Moralist and occasional sermonizer Most of our common, working beliefs are probabilities Moved as if all her articulations were elbow-joints Much ashamed of some people for retaining their reason Must be weaned from his late suppers now Must not read such a string of verses too literally Must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it Napoleon's test Nature dresses and undresses them Nature, who always has her pockets full of seeds Nearest approach to flying that man has ever made Neither make too much of flaws or overstatements Never forget where they have put their money No fresh truth ever gets into a book No man knows his own voice Nobody is so old he doesn't think he can live a year Nutritious diet of active sympathetic benevolence Oblivion as residuary legatee Oblivion's Uncatalogued Library Odious trick of speech or manners must be got rid of. Oh, so patient she is, this imperturbable Nature! Old Age Old age appear as a series of personal insults and indignities Old jokes are dynamometers of mental tension One can generally tell these wholesale thieves easily enough One doesn't like to be cruel,--and yet one hates to lie One that goes in a nurse may come out an angel One very sad thing in old friendships Open patches where the sun gets in and goes to sleep Oracle Original, though you have uttered it a hundred times Ought to produce insanity in every well-regulated mind Our brains are seventy-year clocks Overrate their own flesh and blood Painted there by reflection from our faces Passion never laughs People in the green stage of millionism People that make puns are like wanton boys Person is really full of information, and does not abuse it Personal incidents that call up single sharp pictures Physical necessity to talk out what is in the mind Plagiarism Pluck survives stamina Poem must be kept and used, like a meersehaum, or a violin Poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences Poetry, instead of making one other heart happy Poor creature that does not often repeat himself Poverty is evidence of limited capacity Power of human beings is a very strictly limited agency Power of music Pride, in the sense of contemning others Probabilities Project a principle full in the face of obvious fact! Provincial conceit, which some of us must plead guilty to. Pun is primƒ facie an insult Put coppers on the railroad-tracks Qu'est ce qu'il a fait? What has he done? Racing horses are essentially gambling implements Rapidity with which ideas grow old in our memories Rather longer than usual dressing that morning Rather meet three of the scowlers than one of the smilers. Regained my freedom with a sigh Religious mental disturbances Remarkably intelligent audience Remarks like so many postage-stamps Returning thanks after a dinner of many courses Ribbon which has strangled so many false pretensions Sad thing to be born a sneaking fellow Saddle-leather is in some respects even preferable Saturation-point of each mind differs from that of every other Scientific certainty has no spring in it Scientific knowledge Second story projecting See if the ripe fruit were better or worse Self-assertion, such as free suffrage introduces Self-made men? Self-unconsciousness of genius Sense of SMELL "Settler" in the form of a fact or a revolver Several false premises Shake the same bough again She who nips off the end of a brittle courtesy SIN has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all Six persons engaged in every dialogue between two Small potatoes always get to the bottom. Smiling at present follies So much must be pardoned to humanity So much woman in it,--muliebrity, as well as femineity Society is a strong solution of books Society of Mutual Admiration Sold his sensibilities Somebody had been calling him an old man Something better than flowers; it is a seed-capsule Something she is ashamed of, or ought to be. Somewhere,-- somewhere,--love is in store for them Stages of life Stupidity often saves a man from going mad Style is the man Sudden conviction that I had seen it somewhere Talk about those subjects you have had long in your mind Talkers who have what may be called jerky minds Talking is like playing on the harp Talking is one of the fine arts Talking shapes our thoughts for us Talking with a dull friend affords great relief Tears that we weep inwardly with unchanging features Temptation of money and fame is too great for young people Tepid and unstimulating expression of enthusiasm Terrible smile Thanklessness of critical honesty That great procession of the UNLOVED The Amen! of Nature is always a flower The house is quite as much the body we live in The race that shortens its weapons lengthens its boundaries The schoolmistress had tried life, too The way to argue down a vice is not to tell lies about it The year eighteen hundred and ever-so-few Their business is not a matter of sympathy, but of intellect There is a higher law in grammar, not to be put down There is almost always at least one key to this side-door There is no elasticity in a mathematical fact Think of the griefs that die unspoken! Think only in single file front this day forward Third vowel as its center This is one of those cases in which the style is the man This is the shortest way,--she said Those who ask your opinion really want your praise Time is a fact To pay up, to own up, and to shut up, if beaten To trifle with the vocabulary Too late!---- "It might have been."----Amen! Travellers change their guineas, but not their characters Triumph of the ciphering hand-organ True state of creative genius is allied to reverie, or dreaming Truth must roll, or nobody can do anything with it Truth's sharp corners get terribly rounded Truths a man carries about with him are his tools Turn over any old falsehood Unadorned and in plain calico Undertakers Unpacks and unfolds incidental illustrations Unpretending mediocrity is good Virtually old when it first makes its appearance Virtue passed through the hem of their parchment Virtues of a sporting man Vulgarism of language Wait awhile! Walls of that larger Inquisition which we call Civilization Want of ideas, want of words, want of manners We always compare ourselves with our contemporaries. We are all theological students We carry happiness into our condition We die out of houses, just as we die out of our bodies We don't read what we don't like We never tell our secrets to people that pump for them. Wedded, faded away, threw themselves away Wedding-ring conveys a right to a key to this side-door Weeded their circle pretty well of these unfortunates What a satire, by the way, is that machine What are the great faults of conversation? Whether anything can be conscious of its own flavor?? Whether gifted with the accident of beauty or not While she is silent, Nature is working for her Who is in advance of it or even with it Wholesale professional dealers in misfortune Why authors and actors are ashamed of being funny? Why did I not ask? you will say Will you take the long path with me? Winning-post a slab of white or gray stone Wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession. Wonder how my great trees are coming on this summer. World calls him hard names, probably World has a million roosts for a man, but only one nest. Yes, I am a man, like another Youth and age--something in the soul

THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE [Etext #2665] prabt10.txt or prabt10.zip

Anonymous defamation, putting lies into people's mouths Answer him not Apologizing --A very desperate habit Apology is only egotism wrong side out Celibacy of the clergy Chose a plain one, that keeps good time, and that is all Consolations of religion Conversational non-combatants Didn't know Truth was such an invalid Essence of genius is truthfulness, contact with realities Faith dislikes being meddled with Fear of open discussion implies feebleness Genius Good many coarse people in both callings Happy to agree with all their beliefs, if that were possible Hardness in surgeons, just as there is in theologians Hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors Humility is the first of the virtues--for other people I can't afford to pay quite so much as that even for peace I will not die with a lie rattling in my throat Inclination of two persons with a strong affinity Intellectual non-combatant It is so hard to prove a negative Let him be patient with an opinion he does not accept Life becomes to them as death and death as life List of things that everybody says and nobody thinks List of things that everybody thinks and nobobody says Lurch to quackery, owing to their very loose way of evidence Meddling with things that can take care of themselves Most persons have died before they expire No company of craftsmen that did not need sharp looking after Nobody talks much that does n't say unwise things Not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth Notion of private property in truth Only condition of peace in this world is to have no ideas Opinions Out of plumb when they sit side by side Overestimate of our special individuality Pathological piety Perpetual insult to mediocrity Plenty of praying rogues and swearing saints in the world Presumption in favor of any particular belief Pseudo-science Question everything Saying one thing about it and believing another Spiritualism Surfeits of pathological piety Talk, to me, is only spading up the ground for crops of thought Talked as if I believed what I said The dead-living Took it for granted that he and his crowd were right Torturing of dying people Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble Truth never goeth without a scratcht face Way the pseudo-sciences go to work Wholesale moral arrangements are so different from retail Whoso offers me any article of belief for my signature Wider the intellect, the larger and simpler the expressions Wisdom is the abstract of the past Woman fascinates a man quite as often by what she overlooks Would you stand still in fly-time, or would you give a kick

THE POET AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE [Etext #2666] ptabt10.txt or ptabt10.zip

Age magnifies and aggravates persons out of due proportion Allowed a set of monks to pull their hoods over our eyes Associates facts by their accidental cohesion Authority Dogmatists Don't like the word tolerant Earnest Emptied me of all my voluntary laughter Enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth looking at Enthusiast Epicure in words Ever-ending and ever-beginning stories Fore-stick and the back-log of ancient days How does she go to work to help you? -- Why, she listens I talk half the time to find out my own thoughts If he knows anything, knows how little he knows Intellectual myopia Inventory of my faculties as calmly as if I were an appraiser It is a woman's business to please Knowledge--it excites prejudices to call it science Life is a fatal complaint Minds tossing on the unquiet waves of doubt More science he has the worse for his patient Most of us hope and many of us believe we shall Must not roughly smash other people's idols Never saw the man that couldn't teach me something Pedantry, triviality, and the kind of partial blindness Poetry is not an article of prime necessity, and potatoes are Poets who never write verses Privilege of wisdom to listen Province of knowledge to speak Question these charming old people before it is too late Rather too anxious that I should be comfortable Rounded back, convex with years of stooping over his minute work Said something which another had often felt but never said Satisfaction to the curious practitioner Science without common sense Scientific specialization "Sentimentality," which is sentiment overdone She always laughs and cries in the right places Some people that think everything pitiable is so funny Takes very little to spoil everything for writer, talker, lover There is nothing I do not question Two sides to everybody, as there are to that piece of money Vacuous countenances Virtues of her deceased spouse We never need fear that he will undervalue himself What have I to do with time, but to fill it up with labor? What you hate in him is chiefly misfortune Wholesale thinker who handles knowledge by the cargo Young surgeon, old physician

OVER THE TEACUPS [Etext #2689] teacp10.txt or teacp10.zip