Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. - Mind Quotes

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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.
The creative action is not voluntary at all, but automatic; we can only put the mind into the proper attitude, and wait for the wind, that blows where it listeth, to breathe over it. Thus the true state of creative genius is allied to reverie, or dreaming.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
There isn't a text in the Bible better worth keeping always in mind than that one, 'Judge not, that ye be not judged.'.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
The mind of the bigot [is like] the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it contracts.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
A mind that is stretched by a new idea can never go back to its original dimensions.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
So long as the body is affected through the mind, no audacious device, even of the most manifestly dishonest character, can fail of producing occasional good to those who yield it an implicit or even a partial faith. The argument founded on this occasional good would be as applicable in justifying the counterfeiter and giving circulation to his base coin, on the ground that a spurious dollar had often relieved a poor man's necessities.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Treat bad men exactly as if they were insane. They are in-sane, out of health, morally. Reason, which is food to sound minds, is not tolerated, still less assimilated, unless administered with the greatest caution; perhaps, not at all. Avoid collision with them, so far as you honorably can.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.