Eugene Field Quotes

No book can be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed over.

All good and true book-lovers practice the pleasing and improving avocation of reading in bed ... No book can be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed over.

Books do actually consume air and exhale perfumes.

Let my temptation be a book, which I shall purchase, hold and keep.

Not so, however, with books, for books cannot change. A thousand years hence they are what you find them to-day, speaking the same words, holding forth the same cheer, the same promise, the same comfort; always constant, laughing with those who laugh and weeping with those who weep.

All human joys are swift of wing, For heaven doth so allot it; That when you get an easy thing, You find you haven't got it

Ideas came with explosive immediacy, like an instant birth. Human thought is like a monstrous pendulum; it keeps swinging from one extreme to the other.

But I, when I undress me Each night, upon my knees Will ask the Lord to bless me With apple-pie and cheese.

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night Sailed off in a wooden shoe, - Sailed on a river of crystal light Into a sea of dew.

The best of all physiciansIs apple pie and cheese!

I never lost a little fish - Yes, I'm free to say. It always was the biggest fish I caught, that got away.

The biggest fish he ever caught were those that got away.

Here we have a baby. It is composed of a bald head and a pair of lungs.

Some statesmen go to Congress and some go to jail. It is the same thing, after all.

He is so mean, he won't let his little baby have more than one measle at a time.

Used to think that luck wuz luck and nuthin' else but luck-- It made no diff'rence how or when or where or why it struck; But sev'ral years ago I changt my mind, an' now proclaim That luck's a kind uv science--same as any other game.

Let my temptation be a book.

Father calls me William, sister calls me Will, Mother calls me Willie, but the fellows call me Bill!.

How gracious those dews of solace that over my senses fall At the clink of the ice in the pitcher the boy brings up the hall.

A mighty good sausage stuffer was spoiled when the man became a poet.

What smells so? Has somebody been burning a Rag, or is there a Dead Mule in the Back yard? No, the Man is Smoking a Five-Cent Cigar.

When I demanded of my friend what viands he preferred, He quoth: "A large cold bottle, and a small hot bird!"

I'd like a stocking made for a giant, And a meeting house full of toys, Then I'd go out in a happy hunt For the poor little girls and boys; Up the street and down the street, And across and over the town, I'd search and find them everyone, Before the sun went down.

There is a glorious candor in an honest quart of wine, A certain inspitation which I cannot well define.

But he who truly loves books loves all books alike, and not only this, but it grieves him that all other men do not share with him this noble passion. Verily, this is the most unselfish of loves!