Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Quotes & Sayings

Why can't somebody give us a list of things everybody thinks and nobody says, and another list of the things that everybody says but nobody thinks? — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Have the courage to act instead of react. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

It is a good plan to have a book with you in all places and at all times. If you are presently without, hurry without delay to the nearest shop and buy one of mine. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way - and the fools know it. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be 'consistent'. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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, Sr.

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, Sr.

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, Sr.

Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Death tugs at my ear and says, 'Live. I am coming. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn't give you a fig. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity, for that I would give you anything I have. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Youth fades, love droops, the leaves of friendship fall; A mother's secret hope outlives them all. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

The man who is always worrying about whether or not his soul would be damned generally has a soul that isn't worth a damn. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Trouble makes us one with every human being in the world - and unless we touch others, we're out of touch with life. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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, Sr.

Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Shun such as lounge through afternoons and eves,
And on thy dial write, "Beware of thieves!"
Felon of minutes, never taught to feel
The worth of treasures which thy fingers steal,
Pick my left pocket of its silver dime,
But spare the right,
it holds my golden time! — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred? — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Nothing is more common than the wish to be remarkable — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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, Sr.

To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

The mind of a bigot to the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it contracts. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

A man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Have faith and pursue the unknown end. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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, Sr.

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, Sr.

Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, and to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make an ideal. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Apology is only egotism wrong side out. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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, Sr.

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, Sr.

Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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, Sr.

Speak clearly if you speak at all, carve every word before you let it fall. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Stupidity often saves a man from going mad. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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, Sr.

Every library should try to complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Yet in opinions look not always back,
Your wake is nothing, mind the coming track;
Leave what you've done for what you have to do;
Don't be "consistent," but be simply true. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Even a dog knows the difference between being kicked and being stumbled over. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Simple people ... are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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, Sr.

Pretty much all the honest truth telling in the world is done by children. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else - very rarely to those who say to themselves, 'Go to, now, let us be a celebrated individual!'. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

A great calamity is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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, Sr.

The Amen of nature is always a flower. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Man has his will, but woman has her way. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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? — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them! — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Many people die with their music still in them. Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it time runs out. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Learn the sweet magic of a cheerful face. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Science is the topography of ignorance. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

I hate paying taxes. But I love the civilization they give me — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse. One comfort we have - Cincinnati sounds worse. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

If the wild filly, "Progress," thou wouldst ride,
Have young companions ever at thy side;
But wouldst thou stride the stanch old mare, "Success,"
Go with thine elders, though they please thee less. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Beware how you take away hope from another human being — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Love prefers twilight to daylight. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.