Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.371Thought
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.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. ✨ Oliver Wendell Holmes (1943). The Min… ▶364HopeThoughtTruth
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience. ✨ 1857-8 The Professor at the Breakfast Table, ch.10.342LifeTime
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. ✨ Oliver Wendell Holmes (2007). A Mortal Antipat… ▶365DeathLove
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.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.345Life
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.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 ne… ▶301Love
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad.356Reflection
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men. ✨ 1857-8 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, ch.6.336Humanity
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.Apology is only egotism wrong side out. ✨ 1858-9 The Professor at the Breakfast Table, ch.6.3710Life
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel. ✨ Oliver Wendell Holmes (2007). A… ▶314ReadingTime
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.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! ✨ Oliver Wendell Holmes (1859). … ▶314Death
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.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 bes… ▶336HopeLifePolitics
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.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!'. ✨ Oliver We… ▶348Thought
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable. ✨ 1857-8 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, ch.12.315Life
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.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.326Time
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.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.337Reading
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.Simple people... are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them. ✨ Oliver Wendell Holmes (1868). The Guardian Angel, p.321327HumanityTruth
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.The man who is always worrying about whether or not his soul would be damned generally has a soul that isn't worth a damn.316Hope
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend. ✨ Oliver Wendell Holmes (2007). Professor At The Breakfast Table, p.240, Reprint Services Corpo… ▶3510Humanity
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old. ✨ Letter to Julia Ward Howe on her 70th birthday, 27 May (1889)338HopeTime
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.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.3510ReadingTime
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome mo… ▶283LifePoliticsTime
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be 'consistent'. ✨ Oliver Wendell Holmes (2007). Professor At The Bre… ▶3310HumanityTruth
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve. ✨ Oliver Wendell Holmes (1896). Morse, John T.L… ▶285Life
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.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.285DeathHumanityReading
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.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. ✨ 1891 Over the T… ▶285Time
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads. ✨ Oliver Wendell Holmes (2007). The Poet at the Breakfast Table, p.212, Reprin… ▶308Sadness
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.319Reading
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall. ✨ Oliver Wendell Holmes (2007). Poems 1, p.125, Reprint Services Corporation308Politics
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.264HopeLife
