Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes
A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer and attempting a task he cannot achieve.
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.
When you write in prose you say what you mean. When you write in rhyme you say what you must.
The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye the more light you pour upon it the more it will contract.
I hate being placed on committees. They are always having meetings at which half are absent and the rest late.
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.
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.
The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars nor its great scholars great men.
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.
The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city.
When I want to understand what is happening today or try to decide what will happen tomorrow I look back.
We must think things not words or at least we must constantly translate our words into the facts for which they stand if we are to keep to the real and the true.
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.
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.
Young man, the secret of my success is that at early age I discovered that I was not God.
The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts, but learning how to make facts live.
