Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes - Page 2

After sixty years the stern sentence of the burial service seems to have a meaning that one did not notice in former years. There begins to be something personal about it.

Apology is only egotism wrong side out.

The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience.

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

When you write in prose you say what you mean. When you write in rhyme you say what you must.

Faith as an intellectual state is self-reliance.

People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be "consistent."

Love is the master key which opens the gates of happiness.

I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica as now used could be sunk to the bottom of the sea it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes.

Nature is in earnest when she makes a woman.

The AmenT of Nature is always a flower.

You commit a sin of omission if you do not utilize all the power that is within you. All men have claims on man and to the man with special talents this is a very special claim. It is required that a man take part in the actions and clashes of his time than the peril of being judged not to have lived at all.

When in doubt do it.

A man must get a thing before he can forget it.

We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to.

Except in cases of necessity which are rare leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies they are ready enough to tell him.

To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.

This is a court of law young man not a court of justice.

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

Law is the witness and external deposit of our moral life. Its history is the history of the moral development of the race.

The great thing in this world is not so much where we are but in what direction we are moving.

What a blessed thing it is that nature when she invented manufactured and patented her audiors contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left!

The reward of the general is not a bigger tent but command.

When the style is fully formed if it has a sweet undersong we call it beautiful and the writer may do what he likes in words or syntax.

Life is an end in itself and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it.

The young man knows the rules but the old man knows the exceptions.

One unquestioned text we read All doubt beyond all fear above Nor crackling pile nor cursing creed Can burn or blot it: God is Love.

When I want to understand what is happening today or try to decide what will happen tomorrow I look back.

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

Imitation is a necessity of human nature.

Life is a romantic business but you have to make the romance.

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.

The secret of my success is that at an early age I discovered I was not God.

When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as the poetry of sentences.

Don't be consistent but be simply true.

Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.

The riders in a race do not stop short when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill. There is time to hear the kind voice of friends and to say to one's self: "The work is done."

Longevity is having a chronic disease and taking care of it.

The life of the law has not been logic it has been experience.

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.

A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself stupidity often saves a man from going mad.

Life is painting a picture not doing a sum.

A mind stretched by a new ideanever shrinks back to its original proportions. ~

People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be 'consistent'.

Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else.

A sense of wrongdoing is an enhancement of pleasure.