"Several years before birth, advertise for a couple of parents belonging to long-lived families."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Advertising
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"The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Advice
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This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Age, like distance lends a double charm."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Age and Aging
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"To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Age and Aging
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This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"A person is always startled when he hears himself called old for the first time."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Age and Aging
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"The freeman, casting with unpurchased hand the vote that shakes the turrets of the land."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Democracy
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"A great calamity is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Disasters
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"What I call a good patient is one who, having found a good physician, sticks to him till he dies."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Doctors
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"To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Doubt
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"What a comfort a dull but kindly person is, to be sure, at times! A ground-glass shade over a gas-lamp does not bring more solace to our dazzled eyes than such a one to our minds."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Dullness
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"Even the wisest woman you talk to is ignorant of something you may know, but an elegant woman never forgets her elegance."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Elegance
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"Apology is only egotism wrong side out."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Excuses
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"Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Experts
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"All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called facts. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Who does not know fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact or two that they lead after them into decent company like so many bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at every ingenious suggestion, or convenient generalization, or pleasant fancy? I allow no facts at this table."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Facts
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"The greatest act of faith is when a man understands he is not God."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Faith
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"It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes life worth living."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Faith
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"Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Fame
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"The Amen of nature is always a flower."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Flowers
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"The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may thing what we like and say what we think."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Freedom of Speech
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"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."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Friends and Friendship
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"The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Genius
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"Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is glorious; but a weak flavor of genius in an essentially common person is detestable. It spoils the grand neutrality of a commonplace character, as the rinsings of an unwashed wine-glass spoil a draught of fair water."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Genius
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"The mode in which the inevitable comes to pass is through effort."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Achievement
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"A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Achievement
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"Good Americans when they die, go to Paris."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on America
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"Stillness and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding. Vulgar persons can't sit still, or at least must always work their limbs and features."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Ancestry
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"Every man is an omnibus in which his ancestors ride."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Ancestry
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"A page of history is worth a pound of logic."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on History and Historians
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"Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on History and Historians
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"People can be divided into two classes: those who go ahead and do something, and those who sit still and inquire, why wasn't it done the other way?"

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Humankind
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"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."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Ideals and Idealism
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"A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Ideas
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"Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Ideas
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"Man's mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Ideas
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"A new and valid idea is worth more than a regiment and fewer men can furnish the former than command the latter."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Ideas
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"Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Insanity
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"A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience."

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Instinct
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"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."

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on Kisses and Kissing
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