If I were dying, my last words would be: Have faith and pursue the unknown end.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Every calling is great when greatly pursued.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. When in doubt, do it.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions th...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but forc...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. The language of judicial decision is mainly the language of logic. And the logical method and form f...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Every idea is an incitement... eloquence may set fire to reason.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. A man is usually more careful of his money than of his principles.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy - I don'...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Beware how you take away hope from another human being.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. A new untruth is better than an old truth.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. It seems to me that at this time we need education in the obvious more than investigation of the obs...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Young man, the secret of my success is that at early age I discovered that I was not God.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Eloquence may set fire to reason.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Life is action and passion; therefore, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. 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, JR. This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. The great act of faith is when a man decides he is not God.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts but learning how to make fac...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions -- adding that no ge...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our father's have done them or our ne...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. I confess that altruistic and cynically selfish talk seem to me about equally unreal. With all humil...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. The riders in a race do not stop when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. For I say unto you in all sadness of conviction that to think great thoughts you must be heroes as w...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. For, stripped of the temporary associations which gave rise to it, it is now the moment when by comm...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts, but learning how to make fa...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. You make me chuckle when you say that you are no longer young, that you have turned twenty-four. A m...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any o...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. 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, JR. A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. The great act of faith is when a man decides he is not God.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. To know is not less than to feel.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. A page of history is worth a pound of logic.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. A new and valid idea is worth more than a regiment and fewer men can furnish the former than command...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. People talk fundamentals and superlatives and then make some changes of detail.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in which direction we are moving.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. If a man hasn't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has the worse for his patient.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. I despise making the most of one's time. Half of the pleasures of life consist of the opportunities ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. 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 JR. A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. Nothing is so frequent as to mistake an ordinary human gift for a special and extraordinary endowmen...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimension.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. The ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas [and] the best test of truth is t...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. 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 JR. It is the province of knowledge to speak
And it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passio...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, b...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. To live is to function. That is all there is in living.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will c...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. Our test of truth is a reference to either a present or imagined future majority in favour of our vi...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. A moment's insight is sometimes worth a lifetime's experience.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. Carve every word before you let it fall.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. When I want to understand what is happening today or try to decide what will happen tomorrow, I look...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. What I wouldn't give to be seventy again!
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. A new and valid idea is worth more than a regiment and fewer men can furnish the former than command...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Life is action and passion; therefore it is required of a man that he should share the passion and a...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Don't be 'consistent,' but be simply true.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. The man of action has the present, but the thinker controls the future.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. Even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will c...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. It seems to me that at this time we need education in the obvious more than the investigation of the...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. 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, JR. A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Beware how you take away hope from any human being.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. Men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. A man is usually more careful of his money than of his principles.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. Life is action and passion; therefore, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. 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 JR. 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 JR. The riders in a race do not stop when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. Beware how you take away hope from any human being.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. 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 JR. For I say unto you in all sadness of conviction that to think great thoughts you must be heroes as w...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. You make me chuckle when you say that you are no longer young, that you have turned twenty-four. A m...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome,...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. To be civilized is to be potentially master of all possible ideas, and that means that one has got b...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us t...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. The rules of evidence in the main are based on experience, logic, and common sense, less hampered by...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. 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