Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. - The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859)

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Apologizing, — a very desperate habit, — one that is rarely cured. Apology is only egotism wrong side out. Nine times out of ten, the first thing a man's companion knows of his shortcomings is from his apology.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Nobody talks much that doesn't say unwise things, — things he did not mean to say; as no person plays much without striking a false note sometimes.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
So from the heights of Will
Life's parting stream descends,
And, as a moment turns its slender rill,
Each widening torrent bends, From the same cradle's side,
From the same mother's knee,
—One to long darkness and the frozen tide,
One to the Peaceful Sea!

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.
A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.

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.
Poets are never young, in one sense. Their delicate ear hears the far-off whispers of eternity, which coarser souls must travel towards for scores of years before their dull sense is touched by them. A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.

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.
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.
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.