WednesdayMay 06, 2026
Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969
Oliver Wendell Holmes was the name of two prominent men, father and son:
The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.
Old age is fifteen years older than I am.
Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.
Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor.
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
Speak clearly if you speak at all; carve every word before you let if fall.
The best part of our knowledge is that which teaches us where knowledge leaves off and ignorance begins.
Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.
The flowering moments of the mind Drop half their petals in our speech.
To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.
To reach the port of Heaven we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it. But we must sail, and not drift or lie at anchor.
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.
Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall; A mother's secret hope outlives them all!
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Talking is like playing on the harp; there is as much inlaying the hands on the strings to stop their vibrations As in twanging them to bring out their music.
To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.
Man has his will - but woman has her way.
A good soldier, like a good horse, cannot be of a bad color.
A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not improve.
A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
Age, like distance lends a double charm.
Men, like peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while Before they begin to decay.
Controversy equalizes fools and wise men - And the fools know it.
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.
Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.
Freedom is the ferment of freedom. The moistened sponge drinks up water greedily; the dry one sheds it.
It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes life worth living.
Beauty is the index of a larger fact than wisdom.
And since, I never dare to write As funny as I can.
Feels the same comfort while his acrid words Turn the sweet milk of kindness into curds.
The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.
I was just going to say, when I was interrupted, that one of the many ways of classifying minds is under the heads of arithmetical and algebraical intellects. All economical and practical wisdom is an extension of the following arithmetical formula: 2 + 2 = 4. Every philosophical proposition has the more general character of the expression a + b = c. We are mere operatives, empirics, and egotists until we learn to think in letters instead of figures.
God reigneth. All is well.
Lean, hungry, savage anti-everythings. A modest Request.
What you bring away from the Bible depends to some extent on what you carry to it.
The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye: The more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract.
Boston State-house is the hub of the solar system. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crow-bar.
The brightest blades grow dim with rust, The fairest meadow white with snow.
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.
Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that are not so.
Yes, child of suffering, thou mayst well be sure He who ordained the Sabbath loves the poor!
Pretty much all the honest truth telling in the world is done by children.
You hear that boy laughing?you think he's all fun; But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done; The children laugh loud as they troop to his call, And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all.
I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here; But the old three-cornered hat, And the breeches, and all that, Are so queer!
And when you stick on conversation's burrs, Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs.
Thine eye was on the censer, And not the hand that bore it.
Have faith and pursue the unknown end.
Fame is the scentless sunflower, with gaudy crown of gold; But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.
A general flavor of mild decay.
The Amen! of Nature is always a flower.
Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays The pleasing game of interchanging praise.
Genius does not herd with genius.
The worlds great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.
'T is the heart's current lends the cup its glow, Whate'er the fountain whence the draught may flow.
O hearts that break and give no sign Save whitening lip and fading tresses!
Each of us has to work out his salvation in his own way. The most that another can do is to be able to give a helping hand.
When the last reader reads no more.
When lawyers take what they would give And doctors give what they would take.
Little I ask; my wants are few, I only want a hut of stone, (A very plain brownstone will do,) That I may call my own.
Wake in our breast the living fires, The holy faith that warmed our sires; Thy hand hath made our nation free; To die for her is serving Thee.
End of the wonderful one-hoss shay. Logic is logic. Thats all I say.
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.
There is that glorious epicurean paradox uttered by my friend the historian, in one of his flashing moments: 'Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries.' To this must certainly be added that other saying of one of the wittiest of men: 'Good Americans when they die go to Paris.'
Descartes commanded the future from his study more than Napoleon from the throne.
But Memory blushes at the sneer, And Honor turns with frown defiant, And Freedom, leaning on her spear, Laughs louder than the laughing giant.
Man's mind once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimension.
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
You think they are crusaders sent From some infernal clime, To pluck the eyes of sentiment And dock the tail of Rhyme, To crack the voice of Melody And break the legs of Time.
One flag, one land, one heart, one hand, One Nation, evermore!
O Caroline, Caroline, child of the sun, We can never forget that our hearts have been one....
They walked over the crackling leaves in the garden, between the lines of box, breathing its fragrance of eternity; for this is one of the odors which carry us out of time into the abysses of the unbeginning past; if we ever lived on another ball of stone than this, it must be that there was box growing on it.
People that make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks.
I think it not improbable that man, like the grub that prepares a chamber for the winged thing it never has seen but is to be ... may have cosmic destinies that he does not understand. And so beyond the vision of battling races and an impoverished earth, I catch a dreaming glimpse of peace.
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky. Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannons roar The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds no more.
Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The lightning and the gale!
There is a little plant called reverence in the corner of my soul's garden, which I love to have watered once a week.
Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a mans upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor.
Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned.
Everybody likes and respects self-made men. It is a great deal better to be made in that way than not to be made at all.
I should like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a gorilla, that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of.
The movements of exaltation which belong to genius are egotistic by their very nature. A calm, clear mind, not subject to the spasms and crises which are so often met with in creative or intensely perceptive natures, is the best basis for love or friendship. Observe, I am talking about minds. 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 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.
The hat is the ultimum moriens of respectability.
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!
Their discords sting through Burns and Moore, Like hedgehogs dressed in lace.
There is no friend like the old friend who has shared our morning days, No greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise; Fame is the scentless sunflower, with gaudy crown of gold; But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.
Good to the heels the well-worn slipper feels When the tired player shuffles off the buskin; A page of Hood may do a fellow good After a scolding from Carlyle or Ruskin.
These are the hands whose sturdy labor brings The peasant's food, the golden pomp of kings; This is the page whose letters shall be seen, Changed by the sun to words of living green; This is the scholar whose immortal pen Spells the first lesson hunger taught to men; These are the lines that heavencommanded Toil Shows on his deed, the charter of the soil!
A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. It has come to you over a new route, by a new and express train of association.
Thou say'st an undisputed thing In such a solemn way.
And silence, like a poultice, comes To heal the blows of sound.
Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up.
One unquestioned text we read, All doubt beyond, all fear above; Nor crackling pile nor cursing creed Can burn or blot itGod is love.
Like sentinel and nun, they keep Their vigil on the green.
To brag little, to lose well, To crow gently if in luck, To pay up, to own up, To shut up if beaten, Are the virtues of a sportingman.
The freeman casting with unpurchased hand The vote that shakes the turrets of the land.
It went to pieces all at once All at once and nothing first, Just as bubbles do when they burst.
Where go the poet's lines? Answer, ye evening tapers! Ye auburn locks, ye golden curls, Speak from your folded papers!
Man has his will but woman has her way.
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?
The man who is always worrying whether or not his soul would be damned generally has a soul that isn't worth a damn.
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.
Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris.
The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
It is something to make two blades of grass grow where only one was growing, it is much more to have been the occasion of the planting of an oak which shall defy twenty scores of winters, or of an elm which shall canopy with its green cloud of foliage half as many generations of mortal immortalities.
It is the folly of the world, constantly, which confounds its wisdom.
Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force.
Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtaxed.
A moments insight is sometimes worth a lifes experience.
It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness.
To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad.
I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica* could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes. *Substances used in the composition of medical remedies.
If a man is in a minority of one, we lock him up.
I think, I said, I can make it plain to Benjamin Franklin here that there are at least six personalities distinctly to be recognized as taking part in that dialogue between John and Thomas. Three Johns: 1. The real John; known only to his Maker. 2. Johns ideal John; never the real one, and often very unlike him. 3. Thomas ideal John; never the real John, nor Johns John, but often very unlike either. Three Thomases: 1. The real Thomas. 2. Thomas ideal Thomas. 3. Johns ideal Thomas.
I find 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.
Speak clearly, if you speak at all; Carve every word before you let it fall.
And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring, Let them smile, as I do now, At the old forsaken bough Where I cling
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!
The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the center of each and every town or city.
Trouble creates a capacity to handle it.
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