Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Quotes

Apology is only egotism wrong side out.

Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else - very rarely to those who say to themselves, 'Go to, now, let us be a celebrated individual!'.

Simple people ... are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them.

There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise.

Trouble makes us one with every human being in the world - and unless we touch others, we're out of touch with life.

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

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving - we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it - but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.

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

Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.

It is a good plan to have a book with you in all places and at all times. If you are presently without, hurry without delay to the nearest shop and buy one of mine.

Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth.

It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.

A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day.

Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.

Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a
rose by and by. Life is like that - one stitch at a time taken patiently
and the pattern will come out all right like the embroidery.

Science is the topography of ignorance.

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?

The man who is always worrying about whether or not his soul would be damned generally has a soul that isn't worth a damn.

Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.

I hate paying taxes. But I love the civilization they give me

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

The Last Leaf

I saw him once before,
As he passed by the door,
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o'er the ground
With his cane.

They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.

But now he walks the streets,
And looks at all he meets
Sad and wan,
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
"They are gone."

The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.

My grandmamma has said
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow;

But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff,
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.

I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!

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.

Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future.

Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend

Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped past him.

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.

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked

A great calamity is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened.

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.

Pretty much all the honest truth telling in the world is done by children.

A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.

I like children; I like 'em, and I respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by them.

Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant.

I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions - adding that no general proposition is worth a damn.

Love prefers twilight to daylight.

Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light.

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

Every library should try to complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.

The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.

Death tugs at my ear and says, 'Live. I am coming.

The Amen of nature is always a flower.

Speak clearly if you speak at all, carve every word before you let it fall.

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

Even a dog knows the difference between being kicked and being stumbled over.

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

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

Old Ironsides"

Aye 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 cannon's roar;--
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more.

Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood,
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor's tread,
Or know the conquered knee;--
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!

Oh, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!

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

Nothing is more common than the wish to be remarkable

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.

Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear.

Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them!

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

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

If the wild filly, "Progress," thou wouldst ride,
Have young companions ever at thy side;
But wouldst thou stride the stanch old mare, "Success,"
Go with thine elders, though they please thee less.

Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one.

The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.

Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.

A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend.

Learn the sweet magic of a cheerful face.

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up.

My experience with public libraries is that the first volume of the book I inquire for is out, unless I happen to want the second, when that is out.

Man has his will, but woman has her way.

A man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.

A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.