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 People can be divided into two classes: those who go ahead and do something, and those who sit still...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Beware how you take away hope from another human being.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES A page of history is worth a pound of logic.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do w...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is glorious; but a weak flavor of genius in an essential...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Young men know the rules, but old men know the exceptions.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may thing what we like and say what w...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Love prefers twilight to daylight.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don you love a cushioned seat in a corner, by the fireside, with...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES How many people live on the reputation of the reputation they might have made!
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Our dead brothers still live for us and bid us think of life, not death--of life to which in their y...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Fresh air is good if you do not take too much of it; most of the achievements and pleasures of life ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES A great calamity is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES The greatest tragedy in America is not the destruction of our natural resources, though that tragedy...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Why can't somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says, and another list ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES It is by no means certain that our individual personality is the single inhabitant of these our corp...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Nothing is so commonplace has the wish to be remarkable.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it around. Trouble creates a capacity to ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES It is very lonely sometimes, trying to play God.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Apology is only egotism wrong side out.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES The Amen of nature is always a flower.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Speak not too well of one who scarce will know himself transfigured in its roseate glow; Say kindly ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 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 Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Stillness and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding. Vulgar persons can't sit sti...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Every man is an omnibus in which his ancestors ride.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES I hate being placed on committees. They are always having meetings at which half are absent and the ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtaxed.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits them all.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES God's plan made a hopeful beginning. But man spoiled his chances by sinning. We trust that the story...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES And Silence, like a poultice, comes
To heal the blows of sound.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES The mind of the bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it wil...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates....
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES For him in vain the envious seasons roll, Who bears eternal summer in his soul.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Simple people ... are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES There are a good many real miseries in life that we cannot help smiling at, but they are the smiles ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passio...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES I always say, as you know, that if my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them. It's my j...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES The mode in which the inevitable comes to pass is through effort.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES If a man is in a minority of one, we lock him up.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 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 Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES It is the province of knowledge to speak And it is the privilege of wisdom to listen. -Oliver Wende...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES People can be divided into two classes: those who go ahead and do something, and those who sit still...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Love prefers twilight to daylight
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES The very minute a thought is threatened with publicity it seems to shrink towards mediocrity.
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 ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES The man who is always worrying whether or not his soul would be damned generally has a soul that isn...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Society is always trying in some way to grind us down to a single flat surface.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES There's nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES There are one-story intellects, two-story intellects, and three-story intellects with skylights. All...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Simple people... are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES The minute a phrase, becomes current, it becomes an apology for not thinking accurately to the end o...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES I find the great in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES When I think of talking, it is of course with a woman. For talking at its best being an inspiration,...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 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 To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES The great thing in this world is not so much where you stand, as in what direction you are moving.
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 Science is good furniture for one's upper chamber, if there is common sense below.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 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 Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Age, like distance lends a double charm.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES A person is always startled when he hears himself called old for the first time.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Man has will, but woman has her way.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Even the wisest woman you talk to is ignorant of something you may know, but an elegant woman never ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES A man may fulfil the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought, and may vary...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us t...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES The world has to learn that the actual pleasure derived from material things is of rather low qualit...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
OLIVER WENDELL-HOLMES The young man knows the rules but the old man knows the exceptions
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES The degree of civilization which a people has reached, no doubt, is marked by their anxiety to do as...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES The longing for certainty... is in every human mind. But certainty is generally illusion.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES To think great thoughts, you must be heroes as well as idealists
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES