Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)

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.