Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes

When the style is fully formed if it has a sweet undersong we call it beautiful and the writer may do what he likes in words or syntax.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as the poetry of sentences.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Man has his will - but woman has her way.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Nature is in earnest when she makes a woman.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Don't be consistent but be simply true.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Rough work iconoclasm but the only way to get at the truth.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Take your needle my child and work at your pattern it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that one stitch at a time taken patiently and the pattern will come out all right like embroidery.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Life is a great bundle of little things.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
When I want to understand what is happening today or try to decide what will happen tomorrow I look back.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Talking is like playing on the harp there is as much in laying the hand on the strings to stop their vibrations as in twanging them to bring out their music.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The reward of the general is not a bigger tent but command.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars nor its great scholars great men.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Speak clearly if you speak at all Carve every word before you let it fall.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The secret of my success is that at an early age I discovered I was not God.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
A sick man that gets talking about himself a woman that gets talking about her baby and an author that begins reading out of his own book never know when to stop.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Imitation is a necessity of human nature.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Apology is only egotism wrong side out.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Apology - a desperate habit and one that is rarely cured.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Men are idolaters and want something to look at and kiss and hug or throw themselves down before they always did they always will and if you don't make it of wood you must make it of words.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
A minister is coming down every generation nearer and nearer to the common level of the useful citizen - no oracle at all but a man of more than average moral instincts who if he knows anything knows how little he knows.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
I hate being placed on committees. They are always having meetings at which half are absent and the rest late.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye the more light you pour upon it the more it will contract.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
When you write in prose you say what you mean. When you write in rhyme you say what you must.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The author may arrange the gems effectively but their shape and lustre have been given by the attrition of ages.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
For me at least there came moments when faith wavered. But there is the great lesson and the great triumph: keep the fire burning until by and by out of the mass of sordid details there comes some result.
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
A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer and attempting a task he cannot achieve.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Realize life as an end in itself. Functioning is all there is.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Pick my left pocket of its silver dime but spare the right-it holds my golden time!
Oliver Wendell Holmes
A day's impact is better than a month of dead pull.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The great thing in this world is not so much where we are but in what direction we are moving.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The AmenT of Nature is always a flower.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Apology is only egotism wrong side out.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Apology - a desperate habit and one that is rarely cured.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Men are idolaters and want something to look at and kiss and hug or throw themselves down before they always did they always will and if you don't make it of wood you must make it of words.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
A minister is coming down every generation nearer and nearer to the common level of the useful citizen - no oracle at all but a man of more than average moral instincts who if he knows anything knows how little he knows.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
I hate being placed on committees. They are always having meetings at which half are absent and the rest late.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye the more light you pour upon it the more it will contract.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
When you write in prose you say what you mean. When you write in rhyme you say what you must.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The author may arrange the gems effectively but their shape and lustre have been given by the attrition of ages.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
For me at least there came moments when faith wavered. But there is the great lesson and the great triumph: keep the fire burning until by and by out of the mass of sordid details there comes some result.
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
A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer and attempting a task he cannot achieve.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Realize life as an end in itself. Functioning is all there is.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Pick my left pocket of its silver dime but spare the right-it holds my golden time!
Oliver Wendell Holmes
A day's impact is better than a month of dead pull.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The great thing in this world is not so much where we are but in what direction we are moving.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The AmenT of Nature is always a flower.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
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.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
A man must get a thing before he can forget it.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica as now used could be sunk to the bottom of the sea it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
So long as the body is affected through the mind no audacious device even of the most manifestly dishonest character can fail of producing occasional good to those who yield to it an implicit or even a partial faith.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
A general flavour of mild decay but nothing local as one may say.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Husband and wife come to look alike at last.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Logic is logic. That's all I say.
Oliver Wendell Holmes