Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Quotes
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.
Anytime you see a Hungarian, kick him. He'll know why. Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
Go on, fair Science; soon to thee Shall Nature yield her idle boast; Her vulgar lingers formed a tree, But thou hast trained it to a post.
The world has its fling at lawyers sometimes, but its very denial is an admission. It feels, what I believe to be the truth, that of all secular professions this has the highest standards.
But I have long thought that if you knew a column of advertisements by heart, you could achieve unexpected felicities with them. You can get a happy quotation anywhere if you have the eye.
The very minute a thought is threatened with publicity it seems to shrink towards mediocrity.
There is nothing like the dead cold hand of the past to take down our tumid egotism and lead us into the solemn flow of the life of our race.
Who does not feel that Nansen's account of his search for the Pole rather loses than gains in ideal satisfaction by the pretense of a few trifling acquisitions for science?
There is in all men a demand for the superlative, so much so that the poor devil that has no other way of reaching it attains it by getting drunk.
Poverty comes pleading not for charity, for the most part, but imploring us to find a purchaser for its unmarketable wares.
The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are going.
We have shared the incommunicable experience of war, we have felt, we still feel, the passion of life to its top. In our youth our hearts were touched with fire.
Academic life is but half life it is a withdrawal from the fight to utter smart things that cost you nothing except the thinking them from a cloister.
A man who called everyone a damn fool is like a man who damns the weather. He only shows that he is not adapted to his environment, not that the environment is wrong.
I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy.
if one of two or more joint wrongdoers has to pay all the damages, he cannot recover contribution from his fellows.
The first requirement of a sound body of law is, that it should correspond with the actual feelings and demands of the community, whether right or wrong.
Share the passion and action of your time at peril of being judged not to have lived.
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.
