Top 75 Quotes & Sayings by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American writer Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr..
Last updated on December 24, 2024.
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.
Have the courage to act instead of react.
To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor.
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.
Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up.
The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.
Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.
A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day.
Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way - and the fools know it.
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.
Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.
Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding.
Simple people... are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them.
Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.
Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.
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.
I like children; I like 'em, and I respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by them.
A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor. But if a man hasn't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has, the worse for his patient.
Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth.
Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear.
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.
There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise.
Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.
The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.
We do not quit playing because we grow old, we grow old because we quit playing.
A great calamity is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened.
The Amen of nature is always a flower.
To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.
Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don't you love a cushioned seat in a corner, by the fireside, with your slippers on your feet?
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!
But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.
The mind of a bigot to the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it contracts.
A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.
Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.
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.
Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.
Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us.
Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant.
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.
Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.
Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.
Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.
Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future.
A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.
Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel of the Resurrection.
It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
Don't flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.
Apology is only egotism wrong side out.
Love prefers twilight to daylight.
Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.
Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light.
The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.
Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.
A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend.
Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.
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.
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