Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes
One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think.
Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.
The Amen of nature is always a flower.
If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it round. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't embrace trouble; that's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.
Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.
We do not quit playing because we grow old, we grow old because we quit playing.
Apology is only egotism wrong side out.
Society is always trying in some way to grind us down to a single flat surface.
The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract
The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions. Wisdom
The great thing in this world is not so much where you stand, as in what direction you are moving.
The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power
Talking is like playing the harp, there is as much in laying the hand on the strings to stop their vibrations as in twanging them to bring out their music.
A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought, and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
The life of the law has not been logic but experience.
The advice of their elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.
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. Science
Between two groups of men that want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds I see no remedy except force... It seems to me that every society rests on the death of men.
A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions
Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor. Science
Nothing is so commonplace has the wish to be remarkable.
People can be divided into two classes those who go ahead and do something, and those who sit still and inquire, 'Why wasn't it done the other way'
