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 Quote
A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
A new untruth is better than an old truth.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
A person is always startled when he hears himself called old for the first time.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Apology is only egotism wrong side out.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Beware how you take away hope from another human being.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Controversy equalizes fools and wise men - and the fools know it.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Don't be "consistent" but be simple true.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don you love a cushioned seat in a corner, by the fireside, with your slippers on your feet?
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Every calling is great when greatly pursued.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Every idea is an incitement... Eloquence may set fire to reason.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Happiness consists in activity. It is running steam, not a stagnant pool.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
He has half the deed done who has made a beginning.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
I don't generally feel anything until noon, then it's time for my nap.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
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 Quote
I won't accept anything less than the best a player's capable of doing... and he has the right to expect the best that I can do for him and the team!
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
It is very lonely sometimes, trying to play God.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes life worth living.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Knowledge like timber shouldn't be mush use till they are seasoned.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Love is the master key which opens the gates of happiness.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Love prefers twilight to daylight.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Memory is a net; one 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 Quote
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 Quote
Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Old age is fifteen years older than I am.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
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 Quote
People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be 'consistent'.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Simple people... are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
The advice of their elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
The Amen of nature is always a flower.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
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 Quote
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 Quote
Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
When in doubt, do it.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
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 Quote
Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Quote
