Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

— 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

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

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

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

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.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

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.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

A new untruth is better than an old truth.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light.

— 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

The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Man has will, but woman has her way.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

— 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 the time in which it is used.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Every calling is great when greatly pursued.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

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.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

— 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

It cannot be helped, it is as it should be, that the law is behind the times.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Great constitutional provisions must be administered with caution. Some play must be allowed for the joints of the machine, and it must be remembered that legislatures are ultimate guardians of the liberties and welfare of the people in quite as great a degree as the courts.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Life is a romantic business. It is painting a picture, not doing a sumbut you have to make the romance, and it will come to the question how much fire you have in your belly.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

O Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q. !Strange is the gift that I owe to you;Such a gift as never a kingSave to daughter or son might bring,All my tenure of heart and hand,All my title to house and land;Mother and sister and child and wifeAnd joy and sorrow and death and life!

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Every living sentence which shows a mind at work for itself is to be welcomed. It is not the first use but the tiresome repetition of inadequate catch words which I am observingphrases which originally were contributions, but which, by their very felicity, delay further analysis for fifty years. That comes from the same source as dislike of noveltyintellectual indolence or weaknessa slackening in the eternal pursuit of the more exact.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Speak not too well of one who scarce will knowHimself 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!

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

The general rule, at least, is that while property may be regulated to a certain extent, if regulation goes too far it will be recognized as a taking.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

A river is more than an amenity, it is a treasure.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

A question like the present should be disposed of without undue delay. But a State cannot be expected to move with the celerity of a private business man; it is enough if it proceeds, in the language of the English Chancery, with all deliberate speed.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

The power to tax is not the power to destroy while this Court sits.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

There is no time like the old time, when you and I were young,When the buds of April blossomed, and the birds of spring-time sung!The gardens brightest glories by summer suns are nursed,But oh, the sweet, sweet violets, the flowers that opened first!There is no place like the old place, where you and I were born,Where we lifted first our eyelids on the splendors of the mornFrom the milk-white breast that warmed us, from the clinging arms that bore,Where the dear eyes glistened oer us that will look on us no more!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. There is no love like the old love, that we courted in our pride;Though our leaves are falling, falling, and were fading side by side,There are blossoms all around us with the colors of our dawn,And we live in borrowed sunshine when the day-star is withdrawn. There are no times like the old times,they shall never be forgot!There is no place like the old place,keep green the dear old spot!There are no friends like our old friends,may Heaven prolong their lives!There are no loves like our old loves,God bless our loving wives!

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideasthat the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Gentlemen, to the lady without whom I should never have survived for eighty, nor sixty, nor yet thirty years. Her smile has been my lyric, her understanding, the rhythm of the stanza. She has been the spring wherefrom I have drawn the power to write the words. She is the poem of my life.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

I confess that I do not understand the principle on which the power to fix a minimum for the wages of women can be denied by those who admit the power to fix a maximum for their hours of work. I fully assent to the proposition that here as elsewhere the distinctions of the law are distinctions of degree, but I perceive no difference in the kind or degree of interference with liberty, the only matter with which we have any concern, between the one case and the other. The bargain is equally affected whichever half you regulate. It will need more than the Nineteenth Amendment to convince me that there are no differences between men and women, or that legislation cannot take those differences into account.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

I always say, as you know, that if my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them. Its my job.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

But the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. It does not even protect a man from an injunction against uttering words that may have all the effect of force. The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

When twenty years ago a vague terror went over the earth and the word socialism began to be heard, I thought and still think that fear was translated into doctrines that had no proper place in the Constitution or the common law. Judges are apt to be naif, simple-minded men, and they need something of Mephistopheles. We too need education in the obvious to learn to transcend our own convictions and to leave room for much that we hold dear to be done away with short of revolution by the orderly change of law.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Nature has but one judgment on wrong conductif you can call that a judgment which seemingly has no reference to conduct as suchthe judgment of death.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

I do not think the United States would come to an end if we lost our power to declare an Act of Congress void. I do think the Union would be imperiled if we could not make that declaration as to the laws of the several States.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

I wouldn't give a fig for simplicity this side of complexity but I'd give my right arm for simplicity on the other side of complexity.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes