Selections from the Breakfast-table Series, and Pages from an Old Volume of LifeHoughton, Mifflin, 1883 - 332 pages |
Other editions - View all
Selections from the Breakfast-Table Series, and Pages from an Old Volume of Life Oliver Wendell Holmes No preview available - 2016 |
Common terms and phrases
Addison's Disease admiration asked Aunt Nancy Benjamin Franklin better Boston brain calf called centenarian comes course dead deodand divine doctor Doctors of Divinity doubt Elephan eyes face feel foot genius ghost give grow half hand hard head hear heard heart human John Bunyan John Keats kind Koh-i-noor lady laugh lecture limbs listen living look man's Master mean ment mighty mind ministers morocco natural neighbor never olfactory nerve OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES once perhaps person Phinehas pleasant poem poet poor pretty Professor question remarks remember round Scarabee schoolmistress seems seen side sometimes soul spoken stone story suppose sure talk talkers tell things thought tion told tree true truth turn Venice walking wheel wonder word young doctor young fellow
Popular passages
Page 287 - And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither : so that there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building.
Page 87 - Tic-tac ! tic-tac ! go the wheels of thought ; our will cannot stop them ; they cannot stop themselves ; sleep cannot still them ; madness only makes them go faster ; death alone can break into the case, and, seiz> ing the ever-swinging pendulum, which we call the heart, silence at last the clicking of the terrible escapement we have carried so long beneath our wrinkled foreheads.
Page 71 - He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.
Page 259 - It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
Page 260 - Benjamin Franklin was one of these idlers who were electrifying bottles, but he also found time to engage in the trifling prattle about war and peace going on in those times. The talking Doctor hits him very hard in " Taxation no Tyranny " : " Those who wrote the Address (of the American Congress in...
Page 327 - Is it well with thee ? is it well with thy husband ? is it well with the child ? And she answered, It is well.
Page 132 - It grows out of life, — out of its agonies and ecstasies, its wants and its weariness. Every language is a temple, in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined.
Page 13 - You don't suppose that my remarks made at this table are like so many postage-stamps, do you — each to be only once uttered? If you do, you are mistaken. He must be a poor creature that does not often repeat himself. Imagine the author of the excellent piece of advice, "Know thyself," never alluding to that sentiment again during the course of a protracted existence!
Page 156 - Chelsea ferry-boats, in that long, sharp-pointed, black cradle in which I love to let the great mother rock me, I have seen a tall ship glide by against the tide, as if drawn by some invisible tow-line, with a hundred strong arms pulling it. Her sails hung unfilled...
Page 70 - SIN has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all. — I think, Sir, — said the divinity - student, — you must intend that for one of the sayings of the Seven Wise Men of Boston you were speaking of the other day.