Quotes by Holmes, Oliver Wendell

"To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on action   

"Beauty is the index of a larger fact than wisdom."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on beauty   

"Old books, you know well, are books of the world's youth, and new books are the fruits of its age."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on books - reading
6 fans of this quote   

"The most foolish kind of a book is a kind of leaky boat on the sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on books - reading   

"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."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on books - reading
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"Speak not too well of one who scarce will know himself transfigured in its roseate glow; Say kindly of him what is, chiefly, true, remembering always he belongs to you; Deal with him as a truant, if you will, But claim him, keep him, call him brother still!"

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on brotherhood   

"Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on change   

"Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on theory   

"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."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on thoughts and thinking
3 fans of this quote   

"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."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on thoughts and thinking   

"The minute a phrase, becomes current, it becomes an apology for not thinking accurately to the end of the sentence."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on thoughts and thinking   

"The greatest tragedy in America is not the destruction of our natural resources, though that tragedy is great. The truly great tragedy is the destruction of our human resources by our failure to fully utilize our abilities, which means that most men and women go to their graves with their music still in them."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on tragedies   

"If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it around. 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."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on trouble   

"Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on trust
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"A new untruth is better than an old truth."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on truth   

"Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on truth
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"Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on truth
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"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."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on truth
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"The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on vision   

"Man has will, but woman has her way."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on power   

"It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on wisdom   

"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 the time in which it is used."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on words   

"Every calling is great when greatly pursued."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on work
4 fans of this quote   

"The world has to learn that the actual pleasure derived from material things is of rather low quality on the whole and less even in quantity than it looks to those who have not tried it."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on world   

"The older author is constantly rediscovering himself in the more or less fossilized productions of his earlier years."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on writers and writing   

"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."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on youth   

"Pretty much all the honest truth telling there is in the world is done by children."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on children
4 fans of this quote   

"A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on children   

"Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if it has common sense on the ground floor."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on common sense   

"Nothing is so commonplace has the wish to be remarkable."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on commonplace   

"Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on conceit   

"People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be consistent."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on contradiction
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"Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on controversy   

"... the hydrostatic paradox of controversy. Don't you know what that means? Well, I will tell you. You know that, if you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would stand at the same height in one as in the other. Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way. And the fools know it."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on controversy   

"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."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on conventionality   

"And when you stick on conversation's burrs, don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on conversation   

"In walking, the will and the muscles are so accustomed to working together and performing their task with so little expenditure of force that the intellect is left comparatively free."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on cooperation   

"Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on criticism   

"Our dead brothers still live for us and bid us think of life, not death -- of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and glory of Spring. As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil, our trumpets, sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on death   

"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!"

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on death
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