Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes

The Amen of nature is always a flower... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth... view

By: 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... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Simple people... are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Speak clearly, if you speak at all.. view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Stupidity often saves a man from going mad... view

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... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be 'consistent'... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts but learning how to make facts live... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

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... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

It is very lonely sometimes, trying to play God... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Every calling is great when greatly pursued... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

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... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Every idea is an incitement... Eloquence may set fire to reason... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

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... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Knowledge like timber shouldn't be mush use till they are seasoned... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Love prefers twilight to daylight... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Men do not quit playing because they grow old.. view

By: 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... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Old age is fifteen years older than I am... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

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... view

By: 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... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

He has half the deed done who has made a beginning... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Don't be "consistent" but be simple true... view

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... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

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?.. view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked... view

By: Oliver Wendell Holmes