Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
In order to know whether a human being is young or old, offer it food of different kinds at short intervals. If young, it will eat anything at any hour of the day or night.Collection: Inspirational
Young feller, you will never appreciate the potentialities of the English language until you have heard a Southern mule driver search the soul of a mule.Collection: War
A good soldier, like a good horse, cannot be of a bad color.Collection: Horse
Nothing can be so perfect while we possess it as it will seem when remembered.Collection: Memories
The riders in a race do not stop when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill. There is time to hear the kind voices of friends and say to oneself, The work is done.Collection: Friendship
Carve every word before you let it fall.Collection: Fall
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.Collection: Real
Even the wisest woman you talk to is ignorant of something you may know, but an elegant woman never forgets her elegance.Collection: Ignorant
It is perfectly easy to be original by violating the laws of decency and the canons of good taste.Collection: Law
And silence, like a poultice, comes To heal the blows of sound.Collection: Blow
Longevity is having a chronic disease - and taking care of it.Collection: Leadership
The joy of life is to put out one's power in some natural and useful or harmless way. There is no other. And the real misery is not to do this.Collection: Real
From forty to fifty a man must move upward, or the natural falling off in the vigor of life will carry him rapidly downward.Collection: Moving
Under bad manners, as under graver faults, lies very commonly an overestimate of our special individuality, as distinguished from our generic humanity.Collection: Lying
To be master of any branch of knowledge, you must master those which lie next to it, and thus to know anything you must know all.Collection: Lying
The only condition of peace in this world is to have no ideas, or, at least not to express them.Collection: Peace
Lord, bid war’s trumpet cease; Fold the whole earth in peace.Collection: Veterans Day
It’s a good thing to be rich and a good thing to be strong, but it is a better thing to be beloved of many friends.Collection: Strong
The joy of life is to put out one’s power in some natural and useful or harmless way. There is no other. And the real misery is not to do this.Collection: Real
Men are tattooed with their special beliefs like so many South Sea Islanders; but a real human heart with divine love in it beats with the same glow under all the patterns of all earth’s thousand tribes.Collection: Real