quotes from "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table", part IV

[fiefoe]

• Habit is the approximation of the animal system to the organic. ... (It) is an action in present circumstances from past motives.
• The boat flies like a sea-bird with its long, narrow, outstretched pinions; the bicycle rider, like feathered Mercury, with his wings on his feet. There seems to be nothing left to perfect in the way of human locomotion but aerial swimming.
  
• ... Many people can ride on horseback who find it hard to get on and to get off without assistance. One has to dismount from an idea, and get into the saddle again, at every parenthesis.]
• The hat is the ultimum moriens of "respectability".
  
• Just so we have the great sun-kindled, constructive imaginations, and a far more numerous class of poets who have a certain kind of moonlight-genius given them to compensate for their imperfection of nature.
• The difficulty is, that the alcoholic virtues don't wash; but until the water takes their colors out, the tints are very much like those of the true celestial stuff.
• Any unusual attraction detected in a first glance is a sufficient apology for a second.
  

anserine: of geese, dopey
kris/creese: a Malayan dagger
snood: a net or fabric bag pinned or tied on at the back of a woman's head for holding the hair