Quotes By Oliver Wendell Holmes

But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.

To be civilized is to be potentially master of all possible ideas, and that means that one has got beyond being shocked, although one preserves one's own moral aesthetic preferences.

We do not quit playing because we grow old, we grow old because we quit playing.

Simple people... are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them.

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.

A new untruth is better than an old truth.

Apology is only egotism wrong side out.

Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.

The Amen of nature is always a flower.

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.

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?

Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding.

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.

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.

Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.

Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.

A great calamity is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened.

Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us.

A person is always startled when he hears himself called old for the first time.

Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end.

Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse. One comfort we have - Cincinnati sounds worse.

A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.

Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.

Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.

Happiness consists in activity. It is running steam, not a stagnant pool.

The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.

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.

Have the courage to act instead of react.

The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think.