A Quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Apologizing - a very desperate habit - one that is rarely cured. Apology is only egotism wrong side out.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Quote Topics

Apologizing Apology Cured Desperate Egotism Habit Only Out Rarely Side Very Wrong Wrong Side

Quote Author

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
American - Judge
March 8, 1841 - March 6, 1935

Apology is only egotism wrong side out.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Request an apology when you believe you deserve one, but don't get in a tug of war about it. Instead, be a role model and tender a genuine apology yourself when an apology is due. Your willingness to apologize can be contagious and models maturity for your partner. Also, your non-apologizing partner may use a nonverbal way to reconnect after a fight, defuse the tension, or show you he's in a new place and wants to repair a disconnection. Accept the olive branch however it's offered.

Harriet Lerner

You needn't take it any further, sir. You've proved to me that all this ultraviolence and killing is wrong, wrong, and terribly wrong. I've learned me lesson, sir. I've seen now what I've never seen before. I'm cured! Praise Bog! I'm cured!

Anthony Burgess

My interest in desperation lies only in that sometimes I find myself having become desperate. Very seldom do I start out that way. I can see of course that, in the abstract, thinking and all activity is rather desperate.

Willem de Kooning

Egotism erects its center in itself; love places it out of itself in the axis of the universal whole. Love aims at unity, egotism at solitude. Love is the citizen ruler of a flourishing republic, egotism is a despot in a devastated creation. Egotism sows for gratitude, love for the ungrateful. Love gives, egotism lends; and love does this before the throne of judicial truth, indifferent if for the enjoyment of the following moment, or with the view to a martyr's crown--indifferent whether the reward is in this life or in the next.

Friedrich Schiller

By the Grace of God, I am cured of the disease of egotism, and Death no longer terrifies me.

Guru Arjan

There are some things for which there is no apology, and on the question of slavery, there is no adequate apology for ripping people out of their homeland and bringing them here in chains. There is no adequate apology for the ongoing horrific legacy of racism.

Harriet Lerner

All is egotism. The only people whose mainspring is not egotism are the dead and perhaps idiots.

Miles Franklin

Football is based on desperation. All clubs are desperate in one form or another - desperate to succeed, desperate to survive, desperate to stay where they are, desperate that things get no worse, desperate to arrest the slide.

Simon Barnes

Whenever I hear an American say Aussies drive on the 'wrong side of the road,' I just lose it. You ever think about how those people grew up driving on the 'wrong side of the road,' watched a lot of people get hurt on the 'wrong side of the road,' die on the 'wrong side of the road,' while other people cheered from the 'right side of the road'? Australia has a thing called Highway Fights, so it's touchy.

Russell Crowe

Writers the most learned, the most accurate in details, and the soundest in tendency, frequently fall into a habit which can neither be cured nor pardoned,-the habit of making history into the proof of their theories.

Lord Acton

I have a friend who lives in the South Side of Chicago. I helped out at a church charity there where they try to give a bit of cohesion to a desperate area. Everyone was very welcoming.

Sara Paretsky

I have a friend who lives in the South Side of Chicago. I helped out at a church charity there where they try to give a bit of cohesion to a desperate area. Everyone was very welcoming

Sara Paretsky

When you do the wrong thing, knowing it is wrong, you do so because you haven't developed the habit of effectively controlling or neutralizing strong inner urges that tempt you, or because you have established the wrong habit and don't know how to eliminate them effectively.

W. Clement Stone

In my desire to distance myself from sadistic Christians who revel in the idea of wrath and punishment, I may have crossed a line. Refusing to teach a passage of Scripture is just as wrong as abusing it.I really believe it's time for some of us to stop apologizing for God and start apologizing to Him for being embarrassed by the ways He has chosen to reveal Himself.