Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes & Oliver Wendell Holmes Sayings

"Beware how you take away hope from another human being." Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotations "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 Remarks "It is by no means certain that our individual personality is the single inhabitant of these our corporeal frames... We all do things both awake and asleep which surprise us. Perhaps we have cotenants in this house we live in." Oliver Wendell Holmes "Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children." Oliver Wendell Holmes Remarks "To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man." Oliver Wendell Holmes "Youth fades; love droops, the leaves of friendship fall; A mother's secret hope outlives them all." Oliver Wendell Holmes A few can touch the magic string, and noisy fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them! Oliver Wendell Holmes A good and true woman is said to resemble a Cremona fiddle: age but increases its worth and sweetens its tone Oliver Wendell Holmes A great calamity is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened. Oliver Wendell Holmes Popular Quotes A man may fulfil the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve. Oliver Wendell Holmes Adages A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotations A man over ninety is a great comfort to all his elderly neighbors: he is a picket-guard at the extreme outpost; and the young folks of sixty and seventy feel that the enemy must get by him before he can come near their camp. Oliver Wendell Holmes Popular Quotes A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotations A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience. Oliver Wendell Holmes A new and valid idea is worth more than a regiment and fewer men can furnish the former than command the latter. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotations A page of history is worth a pound of logic. Oliver Wendell Holmes A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time. Oliver Wendell Holmes A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used Oliver Wendell Holmes Popular Quotes A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought, and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used. Oliver Wendell Holmes Adages Age, like distance, lends a double charm. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sayings Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them! Oliver Wendell Holmes Popular Quotes And when you stick on conversation's burrs, don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs Oliver Wendell Holmes Any tax is a discouragement and therefore a regulation so far as it goes. Oliver Wendell Holmes Beauty is the index of a larger fact than wisdom. Oliver Wendell Holmes Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force. Oliver Wendell Holmes But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold. Oliver Wendell Holmes But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas-that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. Oliver Wendell Holmes Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse. One comfort we have - Cincinnati sounds worse. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotations Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse. One comfort we have: Cincinnati sounds worse. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes Consciously or unconsciously we all strive to make the kind of a world we like. Oliver Wendell Holmes Adages Controversy equalizes fools and wise men - and the fools know it Oliver Wendell Holmes Death tugs at my ear and says: Oliver Wendell Holmes Death tugs at my ear and says: "Live, I am coming"; Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotations Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Oliver Wendell Holmes Adages Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them. Oliver Wendell Holmes Remarks Eloquence may set fire to reason. Oliver Wendell Holmes Remarks Even the wisest woman you talk to is ignorant of something you may know, but an elegant woman never forgets her elegance. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotations Every calling is great when greatly pursued. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes For him in vain the envious seasons roll, Who bears eternal summer in his soul. Oliver Wendell Holmes From forty to fifty a man must move upward, or the natural falling off in the vigor of life will carry him rapidly downward. Oliver Wendell Holmes Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris. Oliver Wendell Holmes Adages Greatness is not in where we stand, but in what direction we are moving. We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it -- but sail we must and not drift, nor lie at anchor. Oliver Wendell Holmes Remarks Greatness is not where we stand but in what direction we are moving. Oliver Wendell Holmes Popular Quotes Happiness consists in activity. It is running stream, not a stagnant pool. Oliver Wendell Holmes Remarks I don't embrace trouble; that's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it. Oliver Wendell Holmes I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sayings I hate being placed on committees. They are always having meetings at which half are absent and the rest late. Oliver Wendell Holmes Adages I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotations I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived Oliver Wendell Holmes Popular Quotes I would never use a long word where a short one would answer the purpose. I know there are professors in this country who 'ligate' arteries. Other surgeons only tie them, and it stops the bleeding just as well. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sayings If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it around. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't embrace trouble; that's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say: meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it, and had better be on speaking terms with it. Oliver Wendell Holmes If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it round. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't embrace trouble; that's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it. Oliver Wendell Holmes Remarks If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it round. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't embrace trouble; that's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it. Oliver Wendell Holmes If I were dying my last words would be: Have faith and pursue the unknown end Oliver Wendell Holmes If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate. Oliver Wendell Holmes Remarks If truth were not often suggested by error, if old implements could not be adjusted to new uses, human progress would be slow Oliver Wendell Holmes Popular Quotes In order to know whether a human being is young or old, offer it food of different kinds at short intervals. If young, it will eat anything at any hour of the day or night. Oliver Wendell Holmes Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Oliver Wendell Holmes Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtaxed. Oliver Wendell Holmes It cannot be helped, it is as it should be, that the law is behind the times. Oliver Wendell Holmes It is by no means certain that our individual personality is the single inhabitant of these our corporeal frames... We all do things both awake and asleep which surprise us. Perhaps we have cotenants in this house we live in. Oliver Wendell Holmes It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return. Oliver Wendell Holmes Popular Quotes It is perfectly easy to be original by violating the laws of decency and the canons of good taste. Oliver Wendell Holmes Popular Quotes It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen. Oliver Wendell Holmes It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotations It is very lonely sometimes, trying to play God. Oliver Wendell Holmes Popular Quotes It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living. Oliver Wendell Holmes Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned. Oliver Wendell Holmes Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow. Oliver Wendell Holmes Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power; that is all Oliver Wendell Holmes Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one. Oliver Wendell Holmes Adages Life is a romantic business. It is painting a picture, not doing a sum-but you have to make the romance, and it will come to the question how much fire you have in your belly. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum. Oliver Wendell Holmes Adages Life, not the parson, teaches conduct. Oliver Wendell Holmes Little-minded people's thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes Lord, bid war's trumpet cease; Fold the whole earth in peace. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sayings Love is the master key which opens the gates of happiness. Oliver Wendell Holmes Love prefers twilight to daylight Oliver Wendell Holmes Sayings Man's mind once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimension. Oliver Wendell Holmes Remarks Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions. Oliver Wendell Holmes Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up. Oliver Wendell Holmes Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out. Oliver Wendell Holmes Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotations Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel. Oliver Wendell Holmes Remarks Memory is a net: one that finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook, but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking. Oliver Wendell Holmes Men are idolaters and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you don't make it out of wood, you must make it out of words. Oliver Wendell Holmes Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing. Oliver Wendell Holmes Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our fathers have done them or that our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a larger part than we suspect of what we think. Oliver Wendell Holmes Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotations My experience with public libraries is that the first volume of the book I inquire for is out, unless I happen to want the second, when that is out. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotations Nothing is so commonplace has the wish to be remarkable. Oliver Wendell Holmes Remarks O Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.!Strange is the gift that I owe to you;Such a gift as never a kingSave to daughter or son might bring,-All my tenure of heart and hand,All my title to house and land;Mother and sister and child and wifeAnd joy and sorrow and death and life! Oliver Wendell Holmes Remarks Old age is fifteen years older than I am. Oliver Wendell Holmes Old age is fifteen years older than I am. (also attributed to Bernard Baruch in slightly different form) Oliver Wendell Holmes Old Time, in whose banks we deposit our notes Is a miser who always wants guineas for groats; He keeps all his customers still in arrears By lending them minutes and charging them years. Oliver Wendell Holmes Old time, in whose banks we deposit our notes, Is a miser who always wants guineas for groats; He keeps all his customers still in arrears By lending them minutes and charging them years Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes Old Time, in whose banks we deposit our notes Is a miser who always wants guineas for groats; He keeps all his customers still in arrears By lending them minutes and charging them years. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes On every stem, on every leaf ... and at the root of everything that grew, was a professional specialist in the shape of grub, caterpillar, aphis, or other expert, whose business it was to devour that particular part. Oliver Wendell Holmes On every stem, on every leaf,... and at the root of everything that grew, was a professional specialist in the shape of grub, caterpillar, aphis, or other expert, whose business it was to devour that particular part. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sayings On the whole, I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirms the worth of life as an end in itself, as against the saints who deny it. Oliver Wendell Holmes Our dead brothers still live for us and bid us think of life, not death / of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and glory of Spring. As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil, our trumpets, sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will. Oliver Wendell Holmes Our dead brothers still live for us and bid us think of life, not death--of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and glory of Spring. As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil, our trumpets, sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will. Oliver Wendell Holmes Our morality seems to be only a check on the ultimate domination of force, just as our politeness is a check on the impulse of every pig to put his feet in the trough. Oliver Wendell Holmes Pick my left pocket of its silver dime, but spare the right - it holds my golden time! Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children. Oliver Wendell Holmes Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust Oliver Wendell Holmes Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor. Oliver Wendell Holmes Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor. Oliver Wendell Holmes Science is the topography of ignorance. Oliver Wendell Holmes Remarks Several years before birth, advertise for a couple of parents belonging to long-lived families. Oliver Wendell Holmes Simple people are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits the all. Oliver Wendell Holmes Society is always trying in some way to grind us down to a single flat surface. Oliver Wendell Holmes Remarks Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotations Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise. Oliver Wendell Holmes Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body. Oliver Wendell Holmes Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons. You will find it is to the soul what a water bath is to the body. Oliver Wendell Holmes Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that - one stitch at a time taken patiently and the pattern will come out all right like the embroidery. Oliver Wendell Holmes Talking is like playing on the harp; there is as much in laying the hands on the strings to stop their vibration as in twanging them to bring out their music. Oliver Wendell Holmes Talking is one of the fine arts - the noblest, the most important, the most difficult - and its fluent harmonies may be spoiled by the intrusion of a single harsh note Oliver Wendell Holmes Popular Quotes The advice of their elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books. Oliver Wendell Holmes The Amen of nature is always a flower. Oliver Wendell Holmes The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts. Oliver Wendell Holmes The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library, "The medicines of the soul." Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sayings The degree of civilization which a people has reached, no doubt, is marked by their anxiety to do as they would be done by Oliver Wendell Holmes The great end of living is to harmonize man with the order of things Oliver Wendell Holmes The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. Oliver Wendell Holmes Popular Quotes The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotations The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics. Oliver Wendell Holmes Remarks The longer we live, the more we find we are like other persons. Oliver Wendell Holmes The longing for certainty... is in every human mind. But certainty is generally illusion. Oliver Wendell Holmes The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts but learning how to make facts live. Oliver Wendell Holmes The man flaps about with a bunch of feathers: the woman goes to work softly with a cloth Oliver Wendell Holmes Popular Quotes The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract. Oliver Wendell Holmes Remarks The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes The minute a phrase, becomes current, it becomes an apology for not thinking accurately to the end of the sentence. Oliver Wendell Holmes The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort. Oliver Wendell Holmes The older author is constantly rediscovering himself in the more or less fossilized productions of his earlier years. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sayings The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men - from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms. Oliver Wendell Holmes Remarks The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins. Oliver Wendell Holmes The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer. Oliver Wendell Holmes Adages The very minute a thought is threatened with publicity it seems to shrink towards mediocrity Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotations The world has to learn that the actual pleasure derived from material things is of rather low quality on the whole and less even in quantity than it looks to those who have not tried it. Oliver Wendell Holmes The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius. Oliver Wendell Holmes The worst of a modern stylish mansion is that it has no place for ghosts. Oliver Wendell Holmes Popular Quotes The young man knows the rules but the old man knows the exceptions Oliver Wendell Holmes The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sayings There are a good many real miseries in life that we cannot help smiling at, but they are the smiles that make wrinkles and not dimples Oliver Wendell Holmes There are many things which we can afford to forget which it is yet well to learn. Oliver Wendell Holmes Remarks There are one-story intellects, two-story intellects, and three-story intellects with skylights. All fact collectors with no aim beyond their facts are one-story men. Two-story men compare reason and generalize, using labors of the fact collectors Oliver Wendell Holmes There never was an idea started that woke up men out of their stupid indifference but its originator was spoken of as a crank. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotations There's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know, but a tree and truth. Oliver Wendell Holmes Adages This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sayings Through our great good Fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. Oliver Wendell Holmes To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old. Oliver Wendell Holmes Remarks To be seventy years young is sometimes for more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old. Oliver Wendell Holmes Popular Quotes To brag little - to show well - to crow gently, if in luck - to pay up, to own up, and to shut up, if beaten, are the virtues of a sporting man Oliver Wendell Holmes Adages To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man. Oliver Wendell Holmes Popular Quotes To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad. Oliver Wendell Holmes Popular Quotes To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor. Oliver Wendell Holmes Popular Quotes To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it ? but we must sail and not drift, nor lie at anchor. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sayings Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. Oliver Wendell Holmes Remarks Truth is the breath of life to human society. It is the food of the immortal spirit. Yet a single word of it may kill a man as suddenly as a drop of prussic acid. Oliver Wendell Holmes Adages Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch, nay, you may kick it all about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening. Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light Oliver Wendell Holmes We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, but sail we must and not drift nor lie at anchor. Oliver Wendell Holmes We're not retreating, Hell! We're just attacking in different direction! Oliver Wendell Holmes What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us. Oliver Wendell Holmes What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sayings When I think of talking, it is of course with a woman. For talking at its best being an inspiration, it wants a corresponding divine quality of receptiveness, and where will you find this but in a woman? Oliver Wendell Holmes Adages When in doubt, do it. Oliver Wendell Holmes Adages When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe that the ultimate good is better reached by free trade in ideas. Oliver Wendell Holmes Popular Quotes When the last reader reads no more. Oliver Wendell Holmes Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts. Oliver Wendell Holmes Why can't somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says, and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks. Oliver Wendell Holmes Adages Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future Oliver Wendell Holmes Sayings Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future. Oliver Wendell Holmes With crimson juice the thirsty southern day, Sucks from the hills where buried armies lie, So that the dreamy passion it imparts Is drawn from heroes' bones and lovers' hearts Oliver Wendell Holmes Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sayings Writing or printing is like shooting with a rifle; you may hit your reader's mind, or miss it - but talking is like playing at a mark with the pipe of an engine; if it is within reach, and you have time enough, you can't help hitting it Oliver Wendell Holmes You hear that boy laughing??you think he?s all fun; But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done; The Children laugh loud as they troop to his call, And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all. Oliver Wendell Holmes You may have genius. The contrary is, of course, probable. Oliver Wendell Holmes Young men know the rules, but old men know the exceptions. Oliver Wendell Holmes Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; A mother's secret hope outlives them all. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sayings Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; A mother's secret hope outlives them all. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sayings