Named source · 1858

The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.: Context & Meanings

1 quotation linked to The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by or associated with Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., with source notes, explanations and related topics.

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Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.’s 1858 table-talk work The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

Topics and ideas

Ideas, learning, conversation, mind, intellectual growth, friendship, literature and Holmes’s Autocrat persona.

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Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.

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“Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

Voice: Authorial persona / framed maxim · The Autocrat

Meaning & context

The Autocrat persona pictures significant ideas and experiences as permanently enlarging the range through which a person can think.

Source details

The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, represented by Project Gutenberg #751. The line is spoken in Holmes’s table-talk authorial persona and followed by an Alpine image; it is a literary metaphor for intellectual expansion, not a neurological claim.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.’s 1858 table-talk work The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

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