Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Quotes

189 Sourced Quotes

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
For there we loved, and where we love is home,
Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts,
Though o'er us shine the jasper-lighted dome:—
The chain may lengthen, but it never parts!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
I find that the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail — sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it — but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
I say that conceit is just as natural a thing to human minds as a centre is to a circle. But little-minded people's thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes' conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve. An arc in the movement of a large intellect does not sensibly differ from a straight line. Even if it have the third vowel ['I', the first-person pronoun] as its centre, it does not soon betray it. The highest thought, that is, is the most seemingly impersonal; it does not obviously imply any individual centre.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
I like children, —... I like 'em, and I respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by them.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day, like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the center of each and every town or city.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
A sick man that gets talking about himself, a woman that gets talking about her baby, and an author that begins reading out of his own book, never know when to stop.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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 early implanted in his imagination; no matter how utterly his reason may reject them, he will still feel as the famous woman did about ghosts, Je n'y crois pas, mais je les crains,—"I don't believe in them, but I am afraid of them, nevertheless".

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Dream on! Though Heaven may woo our open eyes,
Through their closed lids we look on fairer skies;
Truth is for other worlds, and hope for this;
The cheating future lends the present's bliss;
Life is a running shade, with fettered hands,
That chases phantoms over shifting sands;
Death a still spectre on a marble seat,
With ever clutching palms and shackled feet;
The airy shapes that mock life's slender chain,
The flying joys he strives to clasp in vain,
Death only grasps; to live is to pursue, —
Dream on! there 's nothing but illusion true!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
A writer is so like a lover! And a talk with the right listener is so like an arm-in-arm walk in the moonlight with the soft heartbeat just felt through the folds of muslin and broadcloth.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power; that is all.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Every language is a temple, in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called facts. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
When lawyers take what they would give
And doctors give what they would take.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Scientific knowledge, even in the most modest persons, has mingled with it a something which partakes of insolence. Absolute, peremptory facts are bullies, and those who keep company with them are apt to get a bullying habit of mind.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Where go the poet's lines?
Answer, ye evening tapers!
Ye auburn locks, ye golden curls,
Speak from your folded papers!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
The soul of a man has a series of concentric envelopes round it, like the core of an onion, or the innermost of a nest of boxes. First he has his natural garment of flesh and blood. Then, his artificial integuments, with their true skin of solid stuffs, their cuticle of lighter tissues, and their variously tinted pigments. Thirdly, his domicile, be it a single chamber or a stately mansion. And then, the whole visible world, in which Time buttons him up as in a loose outside wrapper.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Grant us Thy truth to make us free,
And kindling hearts that burn for Thee,
Till all Thy living altars claim
One holy light, one heavenly flame.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
I would never use a long word, even, where a short one would answer the purpose. I know there are professors in this country who 'ligate' arteries. Other surgeons only tie them, and it stops the bleeding just as well.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
I think you will find that people who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be "consistent".

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Go on, fair Science; soon to thee
Shall Nature yield her idle boast;
Her vulgar fingers formed a tree,
But thou hast trained it to a post.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Science...—in other words, knowledge,—is not the enemy of religion; for, if so, then religion would mean ignorance. But it is often the antagonist of school-divinity.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
There are a good many real miseries in life that one cannot help smiling at, but they are the smiles that make wrinkles and not dimples.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.