[The Complete PG Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.]@TWC D-Link book
The Complete PG Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION
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She is a good person.

Therefore we like her .-- Only we don't.
This brief syllogism, and its briefer negative, involving the principle which some English conveyancer borrowed from a French wit and embodied in the lines by which Dr.Fell is made unamiably immortal, this syllogism, I say, is one that most persons have had occasion to construct and demolish, respecting somebody or other, as I have done for the Model.
"Pious and painefull." Why has that excellent old phrase gone out of use?
Simply because these good painefull or painstaking persons proved to be such nuisances in the long run, that the word "painefull" came, before people thought of it, to mean pain-giving instead of painstaking.
-- So, the old fellah's off to-morrah,--said the young man John.
Old fellow ?--said I,--whom do you mean?
Why, the one that came with our little beauty, the old fellah in petticoats.
-- Now that means something,--said I to myself .-- These rough young rascals very often hit the nail on the head, if they do strike with their eyes shut.

A real woman does a great many things without knowing why she does them; but these pattern machines mix up their intellects with everything they do, just like men.

They can't help it, no doubt; but we can't help getting sick of them, either.

Intellect is to a woman's nature what her watch-spring skirt is to her dress; it ought to underlie her silks and embroideries, but not to show itself too staringly on the outside .-- -You don't know, perhaps, but I will tell you; the brain is the palest of all the internal organs, and the heart the reddest.


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