Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Quotes

189 Sourced Quotes

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day?

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions. After looking at the Alps, I felt that my mind had been stretched beyond the limits of its elasticity, and fitted so loosely on my old ideas of space that I had to spread these to fit it.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
The Widow Rowens was now in the full bloom of ornamental sorrow.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
An older author is constantly rediscovering himself in the more or less fossilized productions of his earlier years.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom;
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Time, time only, can gradually wean us from our Epeolatry, or word-worship, by spiritualizing our ideas of the thing signified.

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.
What I call a good patient is one, who having found a good physician, sticks to him till he dies.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
One could never remember himself in eternity by the mere fact of having loved or hated any more than by that of having thirsted; love and hate have no more individuality in them than single waves in the ocean;—but the accidents or trivial marks which distinguished those whom we loved or hated make their memory our own forever, and with it that of our own personality also.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
I never saw an author in my life, saving perhaps one, that did not purr as audibly as a full-grown domestic cat on having his fur smoothed the right way by a skillful hand.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, and to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make an ideal. "

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Those kind friends who suggest to a person suffering from a tedious complaint, that he "Had better try Homoeopathy," are apt to enforce their suggestion by adding, that "at any rate it can do no harm." This may or may not be true as regards the individual. But it always does very great harm to the community to encourage ignorance, error, or deception in a profession which deals with the life and health of our fellow-creatures.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Did I not say to you a little while ago that the universe swam in an ocean of similitudes and analogies?

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
A writer must make up his mind to the possible rough treatment of the critics, who swarm like bacteria whenever there is any literary material on which they can feed.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
There was never an idea started that woke up men out of their stupid indifference but its originator was spoken of as a crank.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
All of us love companionship and sympathy; some of us may love them too much. All of us are more or less imaginative in our theology.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
And when you stick on conversation's burrs,
Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Some of the sharpest men in argument are notoriously unsound in judgment.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
We forget that weakness is not in itself a sin. We forget that even cowardice may call for our most lenient judgment, if it spring from innate infirmity.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
No, my friends, I go (always other things being equal) for the man that inherits family traditions and the cumulative humanities of at least four or five generations.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
It went to pieces all at once—
All at once and nothing first,
Just as bubbles do when they burst.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
End of the wonderful one-hoss shay.
Logic is logic. That's all I say.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
His home! the Western giant smiles,
And twirls the spotty globe to find it;
This little speck, the British Isles?
'T is but a freckle,—never mind it.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius. Talent is a docile creature. It bows its head meekly while the world slips the collar over it. It backs into the shafts like a lamb. It draws its load cheerfully, and is patient of the bit and of the whip. But genius is always impatient of its harness; its wild blood makes it hard to train.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
The god looked out upon the troubled deep
Waked into tumult from its placid sleep;
The flame of anger kindles in his eye
As the wild waves ascend the lowering sky;
He lifts his head above their awful height
And to the distant fleet directs his sight.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
How many have withered and wasted under as slow a torment in the walls of that larger Inquisition which we call Civilization!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Though fortune scowl, though prudence interfere,
One thing is certain: Love will triumph here!
Lords of creation, whom your ladies rule,—
The world's great masters, when you 're out of school,—
Learn the brief moral of our evening's play
Man has his will,—but woman has her way!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
I won't say, the more intellect, the less capacity for loving; for that would do wrong to the understanding and reason;—but, on the other hand, that the brain often runs away with the heart's best blood, which gives the world a few pages of wisdom or sentiment or poetry, instead of making one other heart happy, I have no question.

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.