Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear.Collection: Jealousy
Have the courage to act instead of react.Collection: Courage
It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.Collection: Knowledge
Don't flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.Collection: Friendship
Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don't you love a cushioned seat in a corner, by the fireside, with your slippers on your feet?Collection: Home
Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.Collection: Trust
Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.Collection: Communication
The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men - from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms.Collection: Religion
Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.Collection: Good
A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.Collection: Experience
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.Collection: Truth
A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.Collection: Education
It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.Collection: Faith
The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.Collection: Wisdom
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.Collection: Science
There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise.Collection: Morning
Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way - and the fools know it.Collection: Men
Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Science
Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.Collection: Imagination
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!Collection: Music
The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.Collection: Romantic
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.Collection: Death
I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it - but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.Collection: Great
Love prefers twilight to daylight.Collection: Love
Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future.Collection: Future
Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.Collection: Friendship
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.Collection: Respect
The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.Collection: Great
Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.Collection: Men
But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.Collection: Friendship
The Amen of nature is always a flower.Collection: Nature
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.Collection: Music
Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light.Collection: Truth
Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.Collection: Friendship
To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor.
Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.
Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer.
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.
To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.
Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.
Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.
We do not quit playing because we grow old, we grow old because we quit playing.
Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up.
Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.
Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.
The mind of a bigot to the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it contracts.
A great calamity is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened.