Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Quotes

189 Sourced Quotes

Do you think I don't understand what my friend, the Professor, long ago called the hydrostatic paradox of controversy?
Don't know what it means? - Well, I will tell you. You know, that, if you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would stand at the same height in one as in the other. Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, — and the fools know it.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Memory is a net; one finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook; but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Don't ever think the poetry is dead in an old man because his forehead is wrinkled, or that his manhood has left him when his hand trembles! If they ever were there, they are there still!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
When I think of talking, it is of course with a woman. For talking at its best being an inspiration, it wants a corresponding divine quality of receptiveness, and where will you find this but in a woman?

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
What a blessed thing it is, that Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
You don't know, perhaps, but I will tell you; the brain is the palest of all the internal organs, and the heart the reddest. 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, Sr.
Thine eye was on the censer,
And not the hand that bore it.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
How many people live on the reputation of the reputation they might have made!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
"I suppose you are an entomologist?"
"Not quite so ambitious as that, sir. I should like to put my eyes on the individual entitled to that name. No man can be truly called an entomologist, sir; the subject is too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp".

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall;
A mother's secret hope outlives them all.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
The history of most countries has been that of majorities—mounted majorities, clad in iron, armed with death, treading down the ten-fold more numerous minorities.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Most persons have died before they expire, — died to all earthly longings, so that the last breath is only, as it were, the locking of the door of the already deserted mansion.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you don't make it of wood, you must make it of words…

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Don't flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
We are very shy of asking questions of those who know enough to destroy with one word the hopes we live on.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Man wants but little drink below,
But wants that little strong.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Lord of all being, thronèd afar,
Thy glory flames from sun and star;
Center and soul of every sphere,
Yet to each loving heart how near!
Sun of our life, Thy quickening ray,
Sheds on our path the glow of day;
Star of our hope, Thy softened light
Cheers the long watches of the night.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
It is the peculiarity of the bore that he is the last person to find himself out.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of an eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Indeed, women rather take to terrible people; prize-fighters, pirates, highwaymen, rebel generals, Grand Turks, and Bluebeards generally have a fascination for the sex; your virgin has a natural instinct to saddle your lion.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
The air we breathe is made up of four elements, at least: oxygen, nitrogen, carbonic acid gas, and knowledge.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Why can't somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says, and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks?

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
And since, I never dare to write
As funny as I can.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Wisdom has taught us to be calm and meek,
To take one blow, and turn the other cheek;
It is not written what a man shall do
If the rude caitiff smite the other too!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.