For I say unto you in all sadness of conviction that to think great thoughts you must be heroes as well as idealists. Only when you have worked alone when you have felt around you are a black gulf of solitude more isolating than that which surrounds the dying man, and in hope and despair have trusted to your own unshaken will then only can you gain the secret isolated joy of the thinker, who knows that a hundred years after he is dead and forgotten men who have never heard of him will be moving to the measure of his thought the subtle rapture of postponed power, which the world knows not because it has no external trappings, but which to his prophetic vision is more real than that which commands an army. And if this joy should not be yours, still it is only thus you can know that you have done what lay in you to do can say that you have lived, and be ready for the end.
More Quotes from Oliver Wendell Holmes:
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For him in vain the envious seasons roll, Who bears eternal summer in his soul.
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When the last reader reads no more.
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And when you stick on conversation's burrs, Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs.
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The riders in a race do not stop when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill. There is time to hear the kind voices of friends and say to oneself, The work is done.
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Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor.
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Based on Topics: Death & Dying Quotes, Hope Quotes, Imagination & Visualization Quotes, Joy & Excitement Quotes, Man Quotes, Power Quotes, Secrets Quotes, Solitude Quotes, World QuotesBased on Keywords: idealists, isolating, postponed, trappings, unshaken
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