Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
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.
Apology is only egotism wrong side out.
A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day.
The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think.
Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth.
The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.
Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel of the Resurrection.
Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else - very rarely to those who say to themselves, 'Go to, now, let us be a celebrated individual!'.
A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.
Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding.
A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.
Beware how you take away hope from any human being.Collection: Life
Man has his will, but woman has her way.Collection: Love
Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness.Collection: Love
Youth fades, love droops, the leaves of friendship fall; A mother's secret hope outlives them all.Collection: Mothers Day
Learn the sweet magic of a cheerful face.Collection: Sweet
We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were early implanted in his imagination; no matter how utterly his reason may reject them...Collection: Fear
Death tugs at my ear and says, 'Live. I am coming.Collection: Running
Trouble makes us one with every human being in the world - and unless we touch others, we're out of touch with life.Collection: World
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?Collection: Women
You may have genius. The contrary is, of course, probable.Collection: Genius
Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite.Collection: Art
Science is the topography of ignorance.Collection: Ignorance
Whatever comes from the brain carries the hue of the place it came from, and whatever comes from the heart carries the heat and color of its birthplace.Collection: Heart
Life as we call it, is nothing but the edge of the boundless ocean of existence when it comes upon soundings.Collection: Life
As we grow older we think more and more of old persons and of old things and places. As to old persons, it seems as if we never know how much they have to tell until we are old ourselves and they have been gone twenty or thirty years. Once in a while we come upon some survivor of his or her generation that we have overlooked, and feel as if we had recovered one of the lost books of Livy or fished up the golden candlestick from the ooze of the Tiber.Collection: Book
Youth longs and manhood strives, but age remembers.Collection: Age
The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce.Collection: Morning
When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe... that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas-- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment. As all life is an experiment. Every year if not every day we wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge.Collection: Freedom
[Science is] piecemeal revelation.Collection: Science
Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that - one stitch at a time taken patiently and the pattern will come out all right like the embroidery.Collection: Time
The truth is that the whole system of beliefs which comes in with the story of the fall of man ... is gently falling out of enlightened human intelligence.Collection: Fall
Memory is a net: one that finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook, but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking.Collection: Running
It is a good plan to have a book with you in all places and at all times. If you are presently without, hurry without delay to the nearest shop and buy one of mine.Collection: Book
I would never use a long word, even, where a short one would answer the purpose.Collection: Long
I firmly believe that if the whole material medica, as now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be better for mankind-and all the worse for the fishes.Collection: Funny
Leverage is everything-don't begin to pry until you've got the long arm on your side.Collection: Your Side
The best servant does his work unseen.Collection: Unseen
I hate paying taxes. But I love the civilization they give meCollection: Hate
To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad.Collection: Crazy
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: Life
For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn't give you a fig. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity, for that I would give you anything I have.Collection: Business
Don't be 'consistent,' but be simply true.Collection: Consistent
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.Collection: Kings
Even a dog knows the difference between being kicked and being stumbled over.Collection: Dog
What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred?Collection: Book
Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, and to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make an ideal.Collection: Men