Inspiring Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. - Page 2

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"Old age is fifteen years older than I am"

"If I were dying my last words would be: Have faith and pursue the unknown end"

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

"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"

"Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening"

"To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor"

"Simple people... are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them"

"Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor"

"Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise"

"Stupidity often saves a man from going mad"

"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?"

"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"

"Don't be "consistent" but be simple true"

"Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant"

"Controversy equalizes fools and wise men - and the fools know it"

"Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse. One comfort we have - Cincinnati sounds worse"

"Love prefers twilight to daylight"

"He has half the deed done who has made a beginning"

"A new untruth is better than an old truth"

"A great calamity is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened"

"Apology is only egotism wrong side out"

"A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day"

"A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times"

"A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide"

"Happiness consists in activity. It is running steam, not a stagnant pool"

"Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us"

"Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other"

"Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads"

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