Top 100 Wendell Holmes Quotes
#1. When I first started reading poetry, all the poets I read - Edgar Allan Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier - were rhyme poets. That's what captured me.
Marv Levy
#2. A mind once stretched by thoughts of heaven will never regain it's original shape (a shameless tweak of a quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes, US author and physician)
Serenity McLean
#3. I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity. - Oliver Wendell Holmes
David Allen
#4. There's such a kind of complicated line between politics and the law and we don't sit around and say, hey, you know, what would Oliver Wendell Holmes have had to say to this.
Dahlia Lithwick
#5. [Oliver Wendell] Holmes never believed in the truth and morality of the laws he was upholding. He said, "I loathe the thick-fingered clowns we call the people."
Jeffrey Rosen
#6. Everybody, I think, who hopes to become a judge would aspire to be able to write as well as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. None are going to be able to attain that.
Merrick Garland
#7. Every calling is great if greatly pursued."-Late Former Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
R.W. Preston
#8. A mind stretched by new experience can never go back to its old dimensions." Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), Progressive Physician, Author
Cary Ellis
#10. We call those poets who are first to mark, Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn, Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark, While others only note that day is gone.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
#15. The only simplicity for which I would give a straw is that which is on the other side of the complex - not that which never has divined it.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#20. I think it not improbable that man, like the grub that prepares a chamber for the winged thing it never has seen but is to be - that man may have cosmic destinies that he does not understand.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#22. Modesty and reverence are no less virtues of freemen than the democratic feeling which will submit neither to arrogance nor to servility.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#23. If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#24. Be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhaps a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#26. We are all sentenced to capital punishment for the crime of living, and though the condemned cell of our earthly existence is but a narrow and bare dwelling-place, we have adjusted ourselves to it, and made it tolerably comfortable for the little while we are to be confined in it.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#28. It is perfectly easy to be original by violating the laws of decency and the canons of good taste.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#30. Our test of truth is a reference to either a present or imagined future majority in favour of our view.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#31. It is a good plan to have a book with you in all places and at all times. If you are presently without, hurry without delay to the nearest shop and buy one of mine.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
#33. A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in colour and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#38. Even the wisest woman you talk to is ignorant of something you may know, but an elegant woman never forgets her elegance.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#39. Shun such as lounge through afternoons and eves,
And on thy dial write, "Beware of thieves!"
Felon of minutes, never taught to feel
The worth of treasures which thy fingers steal,
Pick my left pocket of its silver dime,
But spare the right,
it holds my golden time!
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
#40. The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
#43. Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our fathers have done them or our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a larger part than what we suspect of what we think.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#46. Every idea is an incitement. It offers itself for belief and if believed it is acted on unless some other belief outweighs it or some failure of energy stifles the movement at birth. Eloquence may set fire to reason.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#47. There is one gratification an old author can afford a certain class of critics; that namely, of comparing him as he is with what he was. It is a pleasure to mediocrity to have its superiors brought within range.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#48. Yes, child of suffering, thou may'st well be sure He who ordained the Sabbath loves the poor!
Oliver Wendell Holmes
#49. The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#51. I should like to see any kind of man, distinguishable from a gorilla, that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#52. The prophecies of what the courts will do in fact, and nothing more pretentious, are what I mean by the law.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#53. I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving - we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it - but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
#54. What we most want to ask of our Maker is an unfolding of the divine purpose in putting human beings into conditions in which such numbers of them would be sure to go wrong.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
#58. Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
#59. It's a good thing to be rich and a good thing to be strong, but it is a better thing to be beloved of many friends.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#60. 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, Sr.
#65. Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#66. For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn't give you a fig. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity, for that I would give you anything I have.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
#70. See how he throws his baited lines about,/And plays his men as anglers play their trout.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
#74. I despise making the most of one's time. Half of the pleasures of life consist of the opportunities one has neglected.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#75. There is nothing earthly that lasts so well, as money. A man's learning dies with him, as does his virtues fade out of remembrance, but the dividends on the stocks he bequeaths to his children live and keep his memory green.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#77. Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus was then alive,
Snuffy old drone from the German hive.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
#79. To be civilized is to be potentially master of all possible ideas, and that means that one has got beyond being shocked, although one preserves one's own moral aesthetic preferences.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#80. Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don't you love a cushioned seat in a corner, by the fireside, with your slippers on your feet?
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
#83. What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred?
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
#85. The only condition of peace in this world is to have no ideas, or, at least not to express them.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#86. But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe ... that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market ... That at any rate is the theory of our constitution.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#89. The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#91. The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men
from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
#92. 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.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#93. The riders in a race do not stop when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill. There is time to hear the kind voices of friends and say to oneself, The work is done.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#95. Many people die with their music still in them. Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it time runs out.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
#96. A great man represents a great ganglion in the nerves of society, or to vary the figure, a strategic point in the campaign of history, and part of his greatness consists in his being there.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#100. On the whole, I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirms the worth of life as an end in itself, as against the saints who deny it.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
