Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. quote: "I find that 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."

To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Don't flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intim...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don't you love a cushioned seat in a corner, by the fire...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

I like children; I like 'em, and I respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling the...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.
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.

Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Memory is a net: one finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook, but a dozen miles of wat...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are alw...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome,...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Trouble makes us one with every human being in the world - and unless we touch others, we're out of ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR.

There are three wicks you know to the lamp of a man's life: brain, blood, and breath. Press the b...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

A great calamity is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Science is the topography of ignorance.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men - from mothers most of all, ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to i...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR.

Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR.

A man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimension...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR.

No, my friends, I go (always other things being equal) for the man that inherits family traditions ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

And when you stick on conversation's burs, Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

The crack-brained bobolink courts his crazy mate, Poised on a bulrush tipsy with his weight.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Boston State-house is the hub of the solar system. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if yo...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

It cannot be repeated too often that the safety of great wealth with us lies in obedience to the ne...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

People that make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Grave is the Master's look; his forehead wears Thick rows of wrinkles, prints of worrying cares: ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here; But the old three-cornered hat ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

The hat is the ultimatum moriens of respectability.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

It is not often that an opinion is worth expressing, which cannot take care of itself.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

The first thing naturally when one enters a scholar's study or library, is to look at his books. O...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

As vessels starting from ports thousands of miles apart pass close to each other in the naked bread...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the God of storms, ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Of course everybody likes and respects self-made men. It is a great deal better to be made in that...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Our Union is river, lake, ocean, and sky: Man breaks not the medal, when God cuts the die! Tho...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Then there is that glorious Epicurean paradox, uttered by my friend, the Historian in one of his fl...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Day hath put on his jacket, and around His burning bosom buttoned it with stars.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

One flag, one land, one heart, one hand, One Nation evermore! - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.,
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Yes, child of suffering, thou may'st well be sure He who ordained the Sabbath loves the poor!
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

A man must get a thing before he can forget it.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Scarce one tall frigate walks the sea Or skirts the safer shores Of all that bore to victory ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Ay, here her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to se...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Thou art a female, Katydid! I know it by the trill That quivers through thy piercing notes ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits the all.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

The Amen of nature is always a flower.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

A few can touch the magic string, and noisy fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that never sin...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.
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.

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.

But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.
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 ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.
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...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily o...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse. One comfort we have - Cincinnati sounds worse.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the ca...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Learn the sweet magic of a cheerful face.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR.

Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense o...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passio...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not dri...
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 movi...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Love prefers twilight to daylight.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR.

What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR.

Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

I never dare to write As funny as I can.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

The wind blows out, the bubble dies; The spring entomb'd in autumn lies; The dew dries up; the...
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.

Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame? A fitful tongue of leaping flame; A giddy whirlwind's fickl...
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.

Stop not, unthinking, every friend you meet To spin your wordy fabric in the street; While you...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Little I ask; my wants are few; I only wish a hut of stone (A very plain brown stone will do),...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Sweet shadows of twilight! how calm their repose, While the dewdrops fall soft in the breast of t...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

The lengthening shadows wait The first pale stars of twilight.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR.

Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Apology is only egotism wrong side out.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

There are a good many real miseries in life that we cannot help smiling at, but they are the smiles...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

The freeman casting, with unpurchased hand, The vote that shakes the turrets of the land.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would ...
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 lik...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR.

Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do w...
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 ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way - and the fools know it.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR.

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.
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.

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break its...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR.

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR.

Talking is like playing on the harp; there is as much in laying the hand on the strings to stop thei...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR.

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES SR.

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

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

Life is a romantic business. It is painting a picture, not doing a sumbut you have to make the roman...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Great constitutional provisions must be administered with caution. Some play must be allowed for the...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

It cannot be helped, it is as it should be, that the law is behind the times.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

When twenty years ago a vague terror went over the earth and the word socialism began to be heard, I...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Nature has but one judgment on wrong conductif you can call that a judgment which seemingly has no r...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

I do not think the United States would come to an end if we lost our power to declare an Act of Cong...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

But the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. The most stringen...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

I always say, as you know, that if my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them. Its my jo...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

I confess that I do not understand the principle on which the power to fix a minimum for the wages o...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Gentlemen, to the lady without whom I should never have survived for eighty, nor sixty, nor yet thir...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even m...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

The power to tax is not the power to destroy while this Court sits.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

A question like the present should be disposed of without undue delay. But a State cannot be expecte...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

A river is more than an amenity, it is a treasure.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

The general rule, at least, is that while property may be regulated to a certain extent, if regulati...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Speak not too well of one who scarce will knowHimself transfigured in its roseate glow;Say kindly of...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Every living sentence which shows a mind at work for itself is to be welcomed. It is not the first u...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

The riders in a race do not stop short when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

O Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q. !Strange is the gift that I owe to you;Such a gift as never a kingSave ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

I should like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a gorilla that some good and even prett...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

There is no time like the old time, when you and I were young,
When the buds of April blossomed, ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Old books, you know well, are books of the world's youth, and new books are the fruits of its age.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

The most foolish kind of a book is a kind of leaky boat on the sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom wil...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

We must have a weak spot or two in our character before we can love it much.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

A new untruth is better than an old truth.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at the touch, nay, you may kick it about all day l...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

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

To live is to function. That is all there is in living.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

It is faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth looking at.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

On the whole, I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirms the worth of life as an end in itself...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Love is the master key which opens the gates of happiness.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Every calling is great when greatly pursued.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not dri...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

A few can touch the magic string, and noisy fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that never sin...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

The older author is constantly rediscovering himself in the more or less fossilized productions of h...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Men are idolaters and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; t...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimension.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it will co...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

You commit a sin of omission if you do not utilize all the power that is within you. All men have cl...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

A good soldier, like a good horse, cannot be of a bad color.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense o...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

I firmly believe that if the whole material medical could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul w...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Our brains our seventy year clocks, the angel of life winds them up once and for all, then closes th...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

People talk fundamentals and superlatives and then make some changes of detail.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

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

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

What a comfort a dull but kindly person is, to be sure, at times! A ground-glass shade over a gas-la...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

This is a court of law young man, not a court of justice.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide --that is, violent treatment of a word wi...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Knowledge like timber shouldn't be mush use till they are seasoned.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

This is an inquisitive age, and if we insist on piling up beyond a certain height knowledge which is...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Good Americans when they die, go to Paris.
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 book...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Several years before birth, advertise for a couple of parents belonging to long-lived families.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Youth fades; love droops, the leaves of friendship fall;
A mother's secret hope outlives them al...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

As life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action o...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Beauty is the index of a larger fact than wisdom.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

... the hydrostatic paradox of controversy. Don't you know what that means? Well, I will tell you. Y...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if it has common sense on the ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

And when you stick on conversation's burrs, don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Little-minded people's thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes conversation gives you ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

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

Man's mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

A new and valid idea is worth more than a regiment and fewer men can furnish the former than command...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to i...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

There never was an idea started that woke up men out of their stupid indifference but its originator...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

What I call a good patient is one who, having found a good physician, sticks to him till he dies.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

The freeman, casting with unpurchased hand the vote that shakes the turrets of the land.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

The greatest act of faith is when a man understands he is not God.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes life worth living.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called facts. They are the brute beasts of the...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

In walking, the will and the muscles are so accustomed to working together and performing their task...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

People who make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themse...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

I find that 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.

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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

I find that 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.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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