Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes

Realize life as an end in itself. Functioning is all there is.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The author may arrange the gems effectively but their shape and lustre have been given by the attrition of ages.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye the more light you pour upon it the more it will contract.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

I hate being placed on committees. They are always having meetings at which half are absent and the rest late.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Apology is only egotism wrong side out.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Apology - a desperate habit and one that is rarely cured.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Imitation is a necessity of human nature.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

A sick man that gets talking about himself a woman that gets talking about her baby and an author that begins reading out of his own book never know when to stop.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

We must think things not words or at least we must constantly translate our words into the facts for which they stand if we are to keep to the real and the true.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

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.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

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.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Beware how you take away hope from another human being.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

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.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy - I don't disparage envy, but I don't accept it as legitimately my master.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Love prefers twilight to daylight.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Amen of nature is always a flower.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor. But if a man hasn't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has, the worse for his patient.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

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.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

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.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

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.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Young man, the secret of my success is that at early age I discovered that I was not God.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts, but learning how to make facts live.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes