Oliver Wendell Holmes

Quotes

Every pursuit is great when greatly pursued.
The life of the law has not been logic but experience.
Death tugs at my ear and says: "Live, I am coming."
Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite.
Even a dog knows the difference between being kicked and being stumbled over.
Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, and to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make an ideal.
Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth.
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.
I find the great in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it,-but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
The great thing in this world is not so much where you stand, as in what direction you are moving.
There's nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned.
To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad.
Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body.
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. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them.
To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old.
Science is good furniture for one's upper chamber, if there is common sense below.
Greatness is not in were we stand, but in what direction we are moving. We must sail sometimes with the wind, and somtimes agaisnt it - but sail we must. And not drift, nor lie at anchor.
Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtaxed.
There are one-story intellects, two-story intellects, and three-story intellects with skylights. All fact collectors with no aim beyond their facts are one-story men. Two-story men compare reason and generalize, using labors of the fact collectors as well as their own. Three-story men idealize, imagine, and predict. Their best illuminations come from above through the skylight.
A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.
A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.
I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.
Between two groups of men that want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds I see no remedy except force... It seems to me that every society rests on the death of men.
When I think of talking, it is of course with a woman. For talking at its best being an inspiration, it wants a corresponding divine quality of receptiveness, and where will you find this but in a woman?
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits them all.
Beat a man with the strength of you argument, not with the strength of your arm.
The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.
A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.
A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.
Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force.
Beware how you take away hope from another human being.
Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse. One comfort we have: Cincinnati sounds worse.
Death tugs at my ear and says: "Live, I am coming."
Don't be "consistent" but be simply true.
Eloquence may set fire to reason.
Happiness consists in activity. It is running stream, not a stagnant pool.
I don't generally feel anything until noon, then it's time for my nap.
I don't embrace trouble; that's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.
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.
Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.
Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.
Old age is fifteen years older than I am.
Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.
Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor.
Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.
Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.
The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library, "The medicines of the soul."
The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts but learning how to make facts live.
The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.
The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.
The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.
To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.
When in doubt, do it.
Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.
It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one.
The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.
The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power.
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.
You may have genius. The contrary is, of course, probable.
Love is the master key which opens the gates of happiness.
The advice of their elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.
Greatness is not where we stand but in what direction we are moving.
We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, but sail we must and not drift nor lie at anchor.
The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort.