Quotes by Holmes, Oliver Wendell

"Knowledge like timber shouldn't be mush use till they are seasoned."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on knowledge   

"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."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on language   

"Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on language
3 fans of this quote   

"This is a court of law young man, not a court of justice."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on law and lawyers
4 fans of this quote   

"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."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on life   

"To live is to function. That is all there is in living."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on life   

"It is faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth looking at."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on life   

"It is very lonely sometimes, trying to play God."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on loneliness
3 fans of this quote   

"Love is the master key which opens the gates of happiness."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on love
8 fans of this quote   

"Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on love
9 fans of this quote   

"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."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on marriage   

"I firmly believe that if the whole material medical could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind, and all the worse for the sea."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on medicine   

"Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on memory   

"Our brains our seventy year clocks, the angel of life winds them up once and for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hands of the angel of resurrection."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on mind   

"Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water-bath is to the body."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on music
3 fans of this quote   

"People talk fundamentals and superlatives and then make some changes of detail."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on opinions   

"A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on originality   

"Simple people... are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on perception   

"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."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on pollution   

"You commit a sin of omission if you do not utilize all the power that is within you. All men have claims on man, and to the man with special talents, this is a very special claim. It is required that a man take part in the actions and clashes of his time that the peril of being judged not to have lived at all."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on power   

"Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on praise   

"The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it will contract."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on prejudice   

"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."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on puns   

"How many people live on the reputation of the reputation they might have made!"

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on reputation   

"Love prefers twilight to daylight."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on retirement   

"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?"

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on retirement   

"Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on evolution   

"Young men know the rules, but old men know the exceptions."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on rules   

"Youth fades; love droops, the leaves of friendship fall; A mother's secret hope outlives them all."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on secrets
4 fans of this quote   

"And Silence, like a poultice, comes to heal the blows of sound."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on silence   

"Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits them all."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on sin   

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"God's plan made a hopeful beginning. But man spoiled his chances by sinning. We trust that the story will end in God's glory. But, at present, the other side's winning."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on sin   

"Society is always trying in some way to grind us down to a single flat surface."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on society   

"A good soldier, like a good horse, cannot be of a bad color."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on soldier   

"The man who is always worrying whether or not his soul would be damned generally has a soul that isn't worth a damn."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on soul   

"Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on speech
3 fans of this quote   

"The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on studying   

"Stupidity often saves a man from going mad."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on stupidity   

"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."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on ability
6 fans of this quote   

"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."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on action
4 fans of this quote