Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Quotes (14 Quotes)

You don't know, perhaps, but I will tell you the brain is the palest of all the internal organs, and the heart the reddest. Whatever comes from the brain carries the hue of the place it came from, and whatever comes from the heart carries the heat and color of its birthplace.

Beliefs must be lived in for a good while, before they accommodate themselves to the soul's wants, and wear loose enough to be comfortable.

Knowledge--it excites prejudices to call it science--is advancing as irresistibly, as majestically, as remorselessly as the ocean moves in upon the shore.

You can hire logic, in the shape of a lawyer, to prove anything that you want to prove.

Leverage is everything,--was what I used to say--don't begin to pry till you have got the long arm on your side.

I talk half the time to find out my own thoughts, as a school-boy turns his pockets inside out to see what is in them. One brings to light all sorts of personal property he had forgotten in his inventory.

Don't ever think the poetry is dead in an old man because his forehead is wrinkled, or that his manhood has left him when his hand trembles If they ever WERE there, they ARE there still

Even in common people, conceit has the virtue of making them cheerful the man who thinks his wife, his baby, his house, his horse, his dog, and himself severally unequalled, is almost sure to be a good-humored person, though liable to be tedious at times.

Now habit is a labor-saving invention which enables a man to get along with less fuel,--that is all for fuel is force . . .

I try his head occasionally as housewives try eggs,-- give it an intellectual shake and hold it up to the light, so to speak, to see if it has life in it, actual or potential, or only contains lifeless albumen.

Most persons have died before they expire,--died to all earthly longings, so that the last breath is only, as it were, the locking of the door of the already deserted mansion.

You may set it down as a truth which admits of few exceptions, that those who ask your OPINION really want your PRAISE, and will be contented with nothing less.

You know well enough what I mean by youth and age--something in the soul, which has no more to do with the color of the hair than the vein of gold in a rock has to do with the grass a thousand feet above it.

Nobody talks much that does n't say unwise things,--things he did not mean to say as no person plays much without striking a false note sometimes.