Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. famous quotes

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.

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

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.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Inspirational #Life #Death

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

#Mothers Day #Mom #Hope

Beware how you take away hope from any human being.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Life #Hope #Expectations

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

#Birthday #Time #Years

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

#Courage #Veterans Day #Fear

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

#Love #Marriage #Missing You

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

#Happy Friday #People #Disrespectful

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

#Fall #Communication #Words You Speak

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

#Sweet #Magic #Cheerful

We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were early implanted in his imagination; no matter how utterly his reason may reject them...
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Fear #Men #Imagination

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.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Inspirational #Funny #Spiritual

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

#Running #Ears

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

#Truth #Light

The best servant does his work unseen.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Unseen #Doe #Servant

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

#Life #Positive #Wisdom

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

#Dog #Differences #Knows

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

#Inspirational #Business #Wisdom Experience

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.

#Love #Dream #Kissing

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.

#Love #Change #Dream

A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Education #Children #Years

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

#Writing #Science #Thinking

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

#Trust #Money #Investing

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.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Friendship #Relationship #Courtesy

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

#Wise #Men #Way

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.

#Business #Giving #Simplicity

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

#Hate #Civilization #Giving

Youth longs and manhood strives, but age remembers.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Age #Youth #Aging

You may have genius. The contrary is, of course, probable.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Genius #May #Courses

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

#Nature #Flower #Blossoming

Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Art #Philosophy #Civilization

Love prefers twilight to daylight.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Twilight #Daylight

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.

#Morning #Cheer #Coffee

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

#Stupid #Silly #Men

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.

#Kings #Book #Reading

[Science is] piecemeal revelation.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Science #Revelations

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

#Life #Faith #Insightful

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

#Education #Men #Political

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

#Crazy #Men #Mad

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

#Beauty #Past #Beautiful Women

And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring, Let them smile, as I do now, At the old forsaken bough Where I cling.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Spring #Tree #Age

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

#Memories #Smell #Imagination

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

#Love #Funny #Life

Leverage is everything-don't begin to pry until you've got the long arm on your side.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Your Side #Long #Advice

Whatever comes from the brain carries the hue of the place it came from, and whatever comes from the heart carries the heat and color of its birthplace.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Heart #Color #Brain

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.

#Children #Ems #Done

Don't be 'consistent,' but be simply true.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Consistent

I firmly believe that if the whole material medica, as now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be better for mankind-and all the worse for the fishes.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Funny #Believe #Humor

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

#Apology #Two Sides #Ego

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.

#Book #Reading #Long

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.

#Football #Truth #Lying

When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe... that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas-- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment. As all life is an experiment. Every year if not every day we wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Freedom #Believe #Fighting

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

#Inspiration #Men #Age

Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Love #Inspirational #Life

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

#Running #Communication #Inspiration

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.

#Book #Delay #All Time

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

#Ancestry #Signals #Breeding

Science is the topography of ignorance.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Ignorance #Science #Topography

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.

#Inspirational #Eye #Science

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.

#Morning #Old Friends #No Friends

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.

#Family #Mothers Day #Mom

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

#Friendship #Real Friends #Dating

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.

#Time #Quilts #Children

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

#Bullying #Two #Common Sense

What a blessed thing it is, that Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left!
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Blessed #Writing #Criticism

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!
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Music #Death #Winning

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.

#Life #Love Is #Keys

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.

#Men #Umpires #Worry

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

#Funny Inspirational #Wish #Common

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

#Love #Insanity #Mind

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.

#Thinking #Freedom Of Speech #May

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

#Friendship #Best Friend #Sweet

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.

#Life #Art #Past

The Indian is but a sketch in red crayon of a rudimental manhood. To the problem of his relation to the white race, there is one solution: extermination.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Race #White #Politics

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

#Friendship #Sweet #Real Friends

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.

#Running #Memories #Water

The truth is that the whole system of beliefs which comes in with the story of the fall of man ... is gently falling out of enlightened human intelligence.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Fall #Men #Atheism

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.

#World #Trouble #Humans

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.

#Women #Inspiration #Thinking

As we grow older we think more and more of old persons and of old things and places. As to old persons, it seems as if we never know how much they have to tell until we are old ourselves and they have been gone twenty or thirty years. Once in a while we come upon some survivor of his or her generation that we have overlooked, and feel as if we had recovered one of the lost books of Livy or fished up the golden candlestick from the ooze of the Tiber.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Book #Thinking #Years

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.

#Air #Achievement #Too Much

The sea drowns out humanity and time. It has no sympathy with either, for it belongs to eternity; and of that it sings its monotonous song forever and ever.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Song #Sea #Forever

The year is getting to feel rich, for his golden fruits are ripening fast, and he has a large balance in the barns, which are his banks. The members of his family have found out that he is well to do in the world. September is dressing herself in show of dahlias and splendid marigolds and starry zinnias. October, the extravagant sister, has ordered an immense amount of the most gorgeous forest tapestry for her grand reception.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Years #Balance #Golden

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

#Nature #Royal #Instinct

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.

#Men #Philanthropy #Ends

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.

#Hate #Science #Men

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

#Cities #Sound #Chicago

Life as we call it, is nothing but the edge of the boundless ocean of existence when it comes upon soundings.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Life #Ocean #Existence

No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Lying #Doctors #Medicine

What we most want to ask of our Maker is an unfolding of the divine purpose in putting human beings into conditions in which such numbers of them would be sure to go wrong.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Numbers #Evil #Would Be

See how he throws his baited lines about,/And plays his men as anglers play their trout.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Men #Play #Political

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.

#Birthday #Angel #Wind

We call those poets who are first to mark, Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn, Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark, While others only note that day is gone.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Twilight #Dawn #Gone

I would never use a long word, even, where a short one would answer the purpose.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Long #Purpose #Use

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Hurt #Men #Mad

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

#Sex #Angel #Men

For nothing burns with such amazing speed, As the dry sticks of a religious creed.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

#Religious #Dry #Sticks

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

#Mean #People #Trying

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.

#Character #Blow #Aggravation

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.

#Thinking #Fame #Individual