Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Old age is fifteen years older than I am.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
Any tax is a discouragement and therefore a regulation so far as it goes.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
But I have long thought that if you knew a column of advertisements by heart, you could achieve unexpected felicities with them. You can get a happy quotation anywhere if you have the eye.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
But the moment you turn a corner you see another straight stretch ahead and there comes some further challenge to your ambition.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
Life, not the parson, teaches conduct.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
The advice of their elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
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.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
Our morality seems to be only a check on the ultimate domination of force, just as our politeness is a check on the impulse of every pig to put his feet in the trough.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
People who make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered witticism.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
There are many things which we can afford to forget which it is yet well to learn.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
Leisure only means a chance to do other jobs that demand attention.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
Apologizing - a very desperate habit - one that is rarely cured. Apology is only egotism wrong side out.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
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 implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
Truth is the breath of life to human society. It is the food of the immortal spirit. Yet a single word of it may kill a man as suddenly as a drop of prussic acid.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
My experience with public libraries is that the first volume of the book I inquire for is out, unless I happen to want the second, when that is out.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell