Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

“ Something intensely human, narrow, and definate pierces to the seat of our sensibilities more readily than huge occurrences and catastrophes. A nail will pick a lock that defies hatchet and hammer. “The Royal George” went down with all her crew, and Cowper wrote an exquisitely simple poem about it; but the leaf which holds it is smooth, while that which bears the lines on his mother’s portrait is blistered with tears.
My telling these recollections sets me thinking of others of the same kind which strike the imagination, especially when one is still young. ”

“ Though I am not and never was an editor, I know something of the trials to which they are submitted. They have nothing to do but to develope enormous calluses at every point of contact with authorship. Their business is not a matter of sympathy, but of intellect. They must reject the unfit productions of those whom they long to befriend, because it would be a profligate charity to accept them. One cannot burn his house down to warm the hands even of the fatherless and the widow. ”

“ There comes a time when the souls of human beings, women, perhaps, more even than men, begin to faint for the atmosphere of the affections they were made to breathe. Then it is that Society places its transparent bell-glass over the young woman who is to be the subject of one of its fatal experiments. ”

“ If Rachel’s saying is true, that “fortune is the measure of intelligence,” then poverty is evidence of limited capacity which it too frequently proves to be, notwithstanding a noble exception here and there. Now an editor is a person under a contract with the public to furnish them with the best things he can afford for his money. Charity shown by the publication of an inferior article would be like the generosity of Claude Duval and the other gentlemen highwaymen, who pitied the poor so much they robbed the rich to have the means of relieving them. ”

“ I once ascended the spire of Strasburg Cathedral, which is the highest, I think, in Europe. It is a shaft of stone filigree-work, frightfully open, so that the guide puts his arms behind you to keep you from falling. To climb it is a noonday nightmare, and to think of having climbed it crisps all the fifty-six joints of one’s twenty digits. ”

“ For that great procession of the UNLOVED, who not only wear the crown of thorns, but must hide it under the locks of brown or gray, - under the snowy cap, under the chilling turban, - hide it even from themselves, - perhaps never know they wear it, though it kills them, - there is no depth of tenderness in my nature that Pity has not sounded. Somewhere, - somewhere, - love is in store for them, - the universe must not be allowed to fool them so cruelly. ”

“ Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable. Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else, - very rarely to those who say to themselves, “Go to, now, let us be a celebrated individual!” ”

“ Yes, my surface-thought laughs at you, you foolish, plain, overdressed, mincing, cheaply-organized, self-saturated young person, whoever you may be, now reading this, - little thinking you are what I describe, and in blissful unconsciousness that you are destined to the lingering asphyxia of soul which is the lot of such multitudes worthier than yourself. ”

“ But I found out that the schoolmistress had a vein of charity about her, which had hitherto been worked on a small silver and copper basis, which made her think less, perhaps, of luxuries than even I did, - modestly as I have expressed my wishes.
It is a rather pleasant thing to tell a poor young woman, whom one has contrived to win without showing his rent-roll, that she has found what the world values so highly, in following the lead of her affections. That was an enjoyment I was now ready for.
I began abruptly:- Do you know that you are a rich young person? ”

“ For the verses you send me, I will not say they are hopeless, and I dare not affirm that they show promise. I am not an editor, but I know the standard of some editors. You must not expect to “leap with a single bound” into the society of those whom it is not flattery to call your betters. ”

“ Produce anything really good, and an intelligent editor will jump at it. Don’t flatter yourself that any article of yours is rejected because you are unknown to fame. Nothing pleases an editor more than to get anything worth having from a new hand. ”

“ When “The Pactolian” has paid you for a copy of verses, - (I can furnish you a list of alliterative signatures, beginning with Annie Aureole and ending with Zoë Zenith,) - when “The Rag-bag” has stolen your piece, after carefully scratching your name out, - when “The Nut-cracker” has thought you worth shelling, and strung the kernel of your cleverest poem, - then, and not till then, you may consider the presumption against you, from the fact of your rhyming tendency, as called in question, and let our friends hear from you, if you think it worth while. ”

“ To make a morning call on an Esquimaux acquaintance, one must creep through a long tunnel; his house is all walls and no door, except such a one as an apple with a worm-hole has. One might, very probably, trace a regular gradation between these two extremes. In cities where the evenings are generally hot, the people have porches at their doors, where they sit, and this is, of course, a provocative to the interchange of civilities. A good deal, which in colder regions is ascribed to mean dispositions, belongs really to mean temperature. ”

“ The poetaster who has tasted type is done for. He is like the man who has once been a candidate for the Presidency. He feeds on the madder of his delusion all his days, and his very bones grow red with the glow of his foolish fancy. ”

“ Is a young man in the habit of writing verses? Then the presumption is that he is an inferior person. For, look you, there are at least nine chances in ten that he writes poor verses. Now the habit of chewing on rhymes without sense and soul to match them is, like that of using any other narcotic, at once a proof of feebleness and a debilitating agent. A young man can get rid of the presumption against him afforded by his writing verses only by convincing us that they are verses worth writing. ”

“ The great mystery of God’s providence is the permitted crushing out of flowering instincts. Life is maintained by the respiration of oxygen and of sentiments. In the long catalogue of scientific cruelties there is hardly anything quite so painful to think of as that experiment of putting an animal under the bell of an air-pump and exhausting the air from it. ”

“ The world is pretty quick, nowadays, to catch the flavor of true originality; if you write anything remarkable, the magazines and newspapers will find you out, as the school-boys find out where the ripe apples and pears are. ”

“ What infinite pathos in the small, half-unconscious artifices by which unattractive young persons seek to recommend themselves to the favor of those towards whom our dear sisters, the unloved, like the rest, are impelled by their God-given instincts! ”

“ If you prefer the long jolting of public opinion to the gentle touch of friendship, try it like a man. Only remember this, - that, if a bushel of potatoes is shaken in a market-cart without springs to it, the small potatoes always get to the bottom. ”

“ I opened it, when it came, to the Fourth Sunday in Lent, and read that angelic poem, sweeter than anything I can remember since Xavier’s “My God, I love thee.” - I am not a Churchman, - I don’t believe in planting oaks in flower-pots, - but such a poem as “The Rosebud” makes one’s heart a proselyte to the culture it grows from. Talk about it as much as you like, - one’s breeding shows itself nowhere more than in his religion. A man should be a gentleman in his hymns and prayers ”

“ We do not consider it low-bred in her to pronounce her own speech, and should prefer it so to hearing it from any other person, or reading it. His Grace and his Lordship exhibit themselves very often for popularity, and their houses every day for money. - No, if a man shows himself other than he is, if he belittles himself before an audience for hire, then he acts unworthily. But a true word, fresh from the lips of a true man, is worth paying for, at the rate of eight dollars a day, or even of fifty dollars a lecture. ”

“ Not the great historical events, but the personal incidents that call up single sharp pictures of some human being in its pang or struggle, reach us most nearly. I remember the platform at Berne, over the parapet of which Theobald Weinzäpfli’s restive horse sprung with him and landed him more than a hundred feet beneath in the lower town, not dead, but sorely broken, and no longer a wild youth, but God’s servant from that day forward. ”

“ Read what the singing-women - one to ten thousand of the suffering women - tell us, and think of the griefs that die unspoken! Nature is in earnest when she makes a woman; and there are women enough lying in the next churchyard with very commonplace blue slate-stones at their head and feet, for whom it was just as true that “all sounds of life assumed one tone of love,” as for Letitia Landon, of whom Elizabeth Browning said it ”

“ Gould’s private planets. - Every traveller is a self-taught entomologist. - Old jokes are dynamometers of mental tension; an old joke tells better among friends travelling than at home, - which shows that their minds are in a state of diminished, rather than increased vitality. ”

“ Sends me some strings of verses, candidates for the Orthopedic Infirmary, all of them, in which I learn for the millionth time one of the following facts: either that something about a chime is sublime, or that something about time is sublime, or that something about a chime is concerned with time, or that something about a rhyme is sublime or concerned with time or with a chime. ”

“ One of these young brains is like a bunch of India crackers; once touch fire to it and it is best to keep hands off until it has done popping, - if it ever stops. I have two letters on file; one is a pattern of adulation, the other of impertinence. ”

“ That is the reason why you will find some odd, miscellaneous facts here, which I wished to tell at least once, as I should not have a chance to tell them habitually at our breakfast-table. - We’re very free and easy, you know; we don’t read what we don’t like. Our parish is so large, one can’t pretend to preach to all the pews at once. One can’t be all the time trying to do the best of one’s best if a company works a steam fire-engine, the firemen needn’t be straining themselves all day to squirt over the top of the flagstaff. ”

“ In the mean time, I talked on with our boarders, much as usual, as you may see by what I have reported. I must say, I was pleased with a certain tenderness they all showed toward us, after the first excitement of the news was over. It came out in trivial matters, - but each one, in his or her way, manifested kindness. Our landlady, for instance, when we had chickens, sent the liver instead of the gizzard, with the wing, for the schoolmistress. This was not an accident; the two are never mistaken, though some landladies appear as if they did not know the difference. ”

“ One doesn’t like to be cruel, - and yet one hates to lie. Therefore one softens down the ugly central fact of donkeyism, - recommends study of good models, - that writing verse should be an incidental occupation only, not interfering with the hoe, the needle, the lapstone, or the ledger, - and, above all that there should be no hurry in printing what is written. ”

“ There is always a dearth of really fine articles for a first-rate journal; for, of a hundred pieces received, ninety are at or below the sea-level; some have water enough, but no head; some head enough, but no water; only two or three are from full reservoirs, high up that hill which is so hard to climb. ”

“ It was our choice to go to the church, but we had a kind of reception at the boarding-house. The presents were all arranged, and among them none gave more pleasure than the modest tributes of our fellow-boarders, - for there was not one, I believe, who did not send something. The landlady would insist on making an elegant bride-cake, with her own hands ”

“ Here is a letter I wrote to one of these young folks, but, on the whole, thought it best not to send. It is not fair to single out one for such sharp advice, where there are hundreds that are in need of it. ”

“ Memory is a net; one finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook; but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking. I can prove some facts about travelling by a story or two. There are certain principles to be assumed, - such as these:- He who is carried by horses must deal with rogues. - To-day’s dinner subtends a larger visual angle than yesterday’s revolution. A mote in my eye is bigger to me than the biggest of Dr. ”

“ One is appealed to in behalf of some person in needy circumstances who wishes to make a living by the pen. A manuscript accompanying the letter is offered for publication. It is not commonly brilliant, too often lamentably deficient. ”