Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes
In walking, the will and the muscles are so accustomed to working together and performing their task with so little expenditure of force that the intellect is left comparatively free.
A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.
If I were dying my last words would be: Have faith and pursue the unknown end.
Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is glorious; but a weak flavor of genius in an essentially common person is detestable. It spoils the grand neutrality of a commonplace character, as the rinsings of an unwashed wine-glass spoil a draught of fair water.
Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtaxed.
The freeman, casting with unpurchased hand the vote that shakes the turrets of the land.
Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding.
Greatness is not where we stand but in what direction we are moving
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.
The individual will always be a minority. If a man is in a minority of one, we lock him up.
Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum. Art
We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.
To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad.
Every calling is great when greatly pursued.
A person's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.
All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called facts. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Who does not know fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact or two that they lead after them into decent company like so many bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at every ingenious suggestion, or convenient generalization, or pleasant fancy? I allow no facts at this table.
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 is very lonely sometimes, trying to play God.
Man has will, but woman has her way.
Old age is fifteen years older than I am. Age
A few can touch the magic string, and noisy fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them!
No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.
Speak not too well of one who scarce will know himself transfigured in its roseate glow; Say kindly of him what is, chiefly, true, remembering always he belongs to you; Deal with him as a truant, if you will, But claim him, keep him, call him brother still!
No stranger can get a great many notes of torture out of a human soul it takes one that knows it well -- parent, child, brother, sister, intimate.
