Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes (205 Quotes)



    The movements of exaltation which belong to genius are egotistic by their very nature. A calm, clear mind, not subject to the spasms and crises which are so often met with in creative or intensely perceptive natures, is the best basis for love or friendship. Observe, I am talking about minds. I won't say, the more intellect, the less capacity for loving for that would do wrong to the understanding and reason but on the other hand, that the brain runs away with the heart's best blood, which gives the world a few pages of wisdom or sentiment or poetry, instead of making one other heart happy, I have no question.

    Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.


    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.


    Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss And hug, or throw themselves down before they always did, they always will, and if you don't make it of wood, you must make it of words.

    Descartes commanded the future from his study more than Napoleon from the throne.

    A person is always startled when he hears himself called old for the first time.

    What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

    The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.

    These are the hands whose sturdy labor brings The peasant's food, the golden pomp of kings This is the page whose letters shall be seen, Changed by the sun to words of living green This is the scholar whose immortal pen Spells the first lesson hunger taught to men These are the lines that heavencommanded Toil Shows on his deed, the charter of the soil.

    The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think.

    To reach the port of Heaven we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it. But we must sail, and not drift or lie at anchor.



    Freedom is the ferment of freedom. The moistened sponge drinks up water greedily the dry one sheds it.


    The older author is constantly rediscovering himself in the more or less fossilized productions of his earlier years.

    The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.


    The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.


    Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.

    Ay, tear her tattered ensign down Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky. Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannons roar The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds no more.

    Wisdom has taught us to be calm and meek, To take one blow, and turn the other cheek It is not written what a man shall do If the rude caitiff smite the other too.

    Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding.

    Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, That was built in such a logical way It ran a hundred years to a day.

    What you bring away from the Bible depends to some extent on what you carry to it.

    It is something to make two blades of grass grow where only one was growing, it is much more to have been the occasion of the planting of an oak which shall defy twenty scores of winters, or of an elm which shall canopy with its green cloud of foliage half as many generations of mortal immortalities.

    You think they are crusaders sent From some infernal clime, To pluck the eyes of sentiment And dock the tail of Rhyme, To crack the voice of Melody And break the legs of Time.

    Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.


    The very minute a thought is threatened with publicity it seems to shrink towards mediocrity

    Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The lightning and the gale.

    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.

    It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.

    The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.

    I should like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a gorilla, that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of.

    Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.

    To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor.


    And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring, Let them smile, as I do now, At the old forsaken bough Where I cling.



    His home the Western giant smiles, And twirls the spotty globe to find it This little speck, the British Isles 'T is but a freckle,never mind it.


    The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the center of each and every town or city.

    A good and true woman is said to resemble a Cremona fiddle age but increases its worth and sweetens its tone

    Good to the heels the well-worn slipper feels When the tired player shuffles off the buskin A page of Hood may do a fellow good After a scolding from Carlyle or Ruskin.

    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.


    Related Authors


    O. Henry - William Arthur Ward - Rudyard Kipling - Ivo Andric - George Axelrod - Ella Wheeler Wilcox - Edward Fairfax - Denis Waitley - Arthur C. Clarke - Anthony Hope


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