Quotes By Oliver Wendell Holmes

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.

Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I don't generally feel anything until noon, then it's time for my nap.

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

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!

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

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

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.

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

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.

It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.

The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts but learning how to make facts live.