Famous Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotations

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"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."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"A person is always startled when he hears himself called old for the first time."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"The man who is always worrying whether or not his soul would be damned generally has a soul that isn't worth a damn."
by 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."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"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."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Apology is only egotism wrong side out."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Fresh air is good if you do not take too much of it; most of the achievements and pleasures of life are in bad air."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Knowledge like timber shouldn't be mush use till they are seasoned."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Simple people... are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Stupidity often saves a man from going mad."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Society is always trying in some way to grind us down to a single flat surface."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"A new untruth is better than an old truth."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Beware how you take away hope from another human being."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"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."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
"I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions -- adding that no general proposition is worth a damn."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"I don't generally feel anything until noon, then it's time for my nap."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"The rule of joy and the law of duty seem to me all one."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
"We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"To live is to function. That is all there is in living."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
"A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in colour and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
"People talk fundamentals and superlatives and then make some changes of detail."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
"Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at the touch, nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
"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!"
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"A great calamity is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time."
by 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."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
"A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions"
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimension."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
"A person's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"A page of history is worth a pound of logic."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
"A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
"Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"As life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time, at the peril of being not to have lived."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
"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."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Beat a man with the strength of you argument, not with the strength of your arm."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Beware how you take away hope from another human being"
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Between two groups of men that want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds I see no remedy except force... It seems to me that every society rests on the death of men."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse. One comfort we have - Cincinnati sounds worse."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Controversy equalizes fools and wise men - and the fools know it."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Consciously or unconsciously we all strive to make the kind of a world we like."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Death tugs at my ear and says: 'Live, I am coming.'"
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Don't be 'consistent' but be simple true."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"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."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"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."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don you love a cushioned seat in a corner, by the fireside, with your slippers on your feet?"
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped past him."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
"Every calling is great when greatly pursued."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Every idea is an incitement... Eloquence may set fire to reason."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Every pursuit is great when greatly pursued."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Give us the luxuries of life and we'll dispense with the necessaries."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Greatness is not where we stand but in what direction we are moving"
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Greatness is not in were we stand, but in what direction we are moving. We must sail sometimes with the wind, and somtimes agaisnt it - but sail we must. And not drift, nor lie at anchor."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Have the courage to act instead of react."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"He has half the deed done who has made a beginning."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Husband and wife come to look alike at last"
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"I despise making the most of one's time. Half of the pleasures of life consist of the opportunities one has neglected."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"I don't generally feel anything until noon, then it's time for my nap"
by 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."
by 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 -- we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it -- but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
"I won't accept anything less than the best a player's capable of doing... and he has the right to expect the best that I can do for him and the team!"
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"If I were dying, my last words would be, Have faith and pursue the unknown end."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"If I were dying my last words would be: Have faith and pursue the unknown end."
by 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."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtaxed."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked."
by Oliver Wendell Holmes


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