Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes
A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.
A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.
Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite.
Consciously or unconsciously we all strive to make the kind of a world we like.
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.
Greatness is not in 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.
I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.
It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
Knowledge and timber shouldn’t be much used till they are seasoned.
Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one.
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.
Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth.
Science is good furniture for one’s upper chamber, if there is common sense below.
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.
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.
The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.
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,
To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old.
To obtain a man’s opinion of you, make him mad.
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.
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?
It’s faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes life worth living.