“I won't say, the more intellect, the less capacity for loving; for that would do wrong to the understanding and reason;—but, on the other hand, that the brain often runs away with the heart's best blood, which gives the world a few pages of wisdom or sentiment or poetry, instead of making one other heart happy, I have no question.”

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I won't say, the more intellect, the less capacity for loving; for that would do wrong to the understanding and reason;…" by Oliver Wendell Holmes?
Oliver Wendell Holmes photo
Oliver Wendell Holmes 135
Poet, essayist, physician 1809–1894

Related quotes

L. Frank Baum photo

“I shall take the heart. For brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.”

Source: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
Context: "All the same," said the Scarecrow, "I shall ask for brains instead of a heart; for a fool would not know what to do with a heart if he had one."
"I shall take the heart," returned the Tin Woodman; "for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world."

Hatake Kakashi photo
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach photo

“The intellect and the heart are on good terms with one another. One often represents the other so perfectly, that it is hard to determine which of the two was at work.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Der Verstand und das Herz stehen auf sehr gutem Fuße. Eines vertritt oft die Stelle des andern so vollkommen, dass es schwer ist zu entscheiden, welches von beiden tätig war.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 42.

Mark Twain photo

“I wish I could make him understand that a loving good heart is riches enough, and that without it intellect is poverty.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: The Diary of Adam and Eve

Edgar Allan Poe photo

“In one case as in the other, the question which gives away the sacrificial mentality underlying group belonging is the same: are you for us, or are you one of them? It is the question which reveals the impossibility of a cracking of heart, and thus the impossibility of Eucharist.”

James Alison (1959) Christian theologian, priest

Source: Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001), " Theology amidst the stones and dust http://girardianlectionary.net/res/alison_elijah.htm", p. 35.

“If you look at the world with parted lips and a pure heart, and will the good, won't that make a true and beautiful poem? One's heart tells one that it will; and one's heart is wrong. There is no direct road to Parnassus.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"Recent Poetry," The Yale Review (Autumn 1955) [p. 237]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

John Wayne photo
James Hudson Taylor photo

“I am in great straits for funds. I am happy about it. The Lord may take away all our troublesome people through it and give us true-hearted ones instead.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Six: Assault on the Nine. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1988, 296).

Stig Dagerman photo

Related topics