Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quotes

136 Sourced Quotes

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The law is the witness and external deposit of our moral life. Its history is the history of the moral development of the race.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine shades!
Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids!
O, might I vole to some umbrageous clump,--
Depart,--be off,--excede,--evade,--erump!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
When one thinks coldly I see no reason for attributing to man a significance different in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or to a grain of sand.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
To an imagination of any scope the most far reaching form of power is not money, it is the command of ideas

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The sea drowns out humanity and time. It has no sympathy with either, for it belongs to eternity; and of that it sings its monotonous song forever and ever.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The year is getting to feel rich, for his golden fruits are ripening fast, and he has a large balance in the barns, which are his banks. The members of his family have found out that he is well to do in the world. September is dressing herself in show of dahlias and splendid marigolds and starry zinnias. October, the extravagant sister, has ordered an immense amount of the most gorgeous forest tapestry for her grand reception.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
What we most want to ask of our Maker is an unfolding of the divine purpose in putting human beings into conditions in which such numbers of them would be sure to go wrong.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The last thing an old teacher wants is, as you know full well, a new set of terms for a familiar set of objects. It is hard instructing ancient canine individuals in new devices. It is hard teaching old professors new tricks.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
See how he throws his baited lines about,/And plays his men as anglers play their trout.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.