Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Death tugs at my ear and says: "Live, I am coming".
The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.
Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.
The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort.
Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.
Old age is fifteen years older than I am.
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.
Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse. One comfort we have - Cincinnati sounds worse.
The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.
Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us.
People who make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered witticism.
How many people live on the reputation of the reputation they might have made!
He has half the deed done who has made a beginning.
I don't generally feel anything until noon, then it's time for my nap.
I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.
The minute a phrase, becomes current, it becomes an apology for not thinking accurately to the end of the sentence.
The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.
Several years before birth, advertise for a couple of parents belonging to long-lived families.
A person is always startled when he hears himself called old for the first time.
The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.
Pick my left pocket of its silver dime, but spare the right - it holds my golden time!
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.
Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.
The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library, "The medicines of the soul."
Fresh air is good if you do not take too much of it; most of the achievements and pleasures of life are in bad air.
