A person is always startled when he hears himself called old for the first time. Oliver Wendell Holmes
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
A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. Oliver Wendell Holmes
A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used. Oliver Wendell Holmes
As life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time, at the peril of being not to have lived. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don you love a cushioned seat in a corner, by the fireside, with your slippers on your feet? Oliver Wendell Holmes
Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped past him. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Every idea is an incitement...Eloquence may set fire to reason. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Fresh air is good if you do not take too much of it; most of the achievements and pleasures of life are in bad air. Oliver Wendell Holmes
How many people live on the reputation of the reputation they might have made! Oliver Wendell Holmes
I don't generally feel anything until noon, then it's time for my nap. Oliver Wendell Holmes
I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions - adding that no general proposition is worth a damn. Oliver Wendell Holmes
I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived. Oliver Wendell Holmes
I won't accept anything less than the best a player's capable of doing... and he has the right to expect the best that I can do for him and the team! Oliver Wendell Holmes
I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity. Oliver Wendell Holmes
If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it round. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't embrace trouble; that's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it. Oliver Wendell Holmes
If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate. Oliver Wendell Holmes
It is by no means certain that our individual personality is the single inhabitant of these our corporeal frames... We all do things both awake and asleep which surprise us. Perhaps we have cotenants in this house we live in. Oliver Wendell Holmes
It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes life worth living. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Knowledge like timber shouldn't be mush use till they are seasoned. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide - that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life - are alike forbidden. Oliver Wendell Holmes
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. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Man's mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing. Oliver Wendell Holmes
One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel of the Resurrection. Oliver Wendell Holmes
People talk fundamentals and superlatives and then make some changes of detail. Oliver Wendell Holmes
People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be 'consistent'. Oliver Wendell Holmes
People who make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered witticism. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Pick my left pocket of its silver dime, but spare the right - it holds my golden time! Oliver Wendell Holmes
Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children. Oliver Wendell Holmes
The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library, "The medicines of the soul." Oliver Wendell Holmes
The greatest act of faith is when a man understands he is not God. Oliver Wendell Holmes
The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving. Oliver Wendell Holmes
The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts but learning how to make facts live. Oliver Wendell Holmes
The man who is always worrying about whether or not his soul would be damned generally has a soul that isn't worth a damn. Oliver Wendell Holmes
The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size. Oliver Wendell Holmes
The minute a phrase, becomes current, it becomes an apology for not thinking accurately to the end of the sentence. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. Oliver Wendell Holmes
To be seventy years young is sometimes for more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old. Oliver Wendell Holmes
To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man. Oliver Wendell Holmes
To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at the touch, nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts. Oliver Wendell Holmes
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
Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Type: Writer Date of Birth:
1809-08-29 Year of Death:
1894 Nationality:
