Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quotes
"I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Equality, Envy, Passion, Respect)
"Young man, the secret of my success is that an early age I discovered that I was not God."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Age, Success, God, Man)
"You make me chuckle when you say that you are no longer young, that you have turned twenty-four. A man is or may be young to after sixty, and not old before eighty."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Man, May, Old)
"We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Expression, Opinions)
"Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at the touch, nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Truth, Day, Evening, Football, May, Will)
"To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: First, Man, Principles)
"To be seventy years young is sometimes for more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Old, Years)
"To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Old, Years)
"There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Friend, Old, Praise)
"The rule of joy and the law of duty seem to me all one."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Duty, Joy, Law)
"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Man, Right)
"It seems to me that at this time we need education in the obvious more than the investigation of the obscure."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Education, Time, Investigation, Obvious)
"Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Certainty)
"Don't be 'consistent,' but be simply true."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped past him."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Thought, Man, Past)
"Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Time, Lawyers)
"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.
(Related: Life, Time)
"The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Eye, Light, Mind, Will)
"Life is action and passion; therefore, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of the time, at peril of being judged not to have lived."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Life, Time, Action, Being, Man, Passion)
"Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Life, End, Living, Question, Worth)
"The greatest act of faith is when a man understands he is not God."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Faith, God, Act, Man)
"Men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Government, Men)
"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.
(Related: Fathers, Neighbors, Reason)
"Nothing is so commonplace has the wish to be remarkable."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Nothing, Remarkable)
"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.
(Related: Life, End, Saints, Worth)
"People talk fundamentals and superlatives and then make some changes of detail."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: People, Detail, Talk)
"The great act of faith is when a man decides he is not God."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Faith, God, Act, Man)
"Man's mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Idea, Man, Mind)
"The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Direction, World)
"A man is usually more careful of his money than of his principles."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Money, Man, Principles)
"Carve every word before you let it fall."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Word)
"Beware how you take away hope from any human being."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Hope, Being)
"As life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time, at the peril of being not to have lived."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Life, Time, Action, Being, Man, Passion)
"Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Time, Thought, Circumstances, Content, Living, May, Skin, Word)
"A new and valid idea is worth more than a regiment and fewer men can furnish the former than command the latter."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Men, Idea, Worth)
"A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Experience, Mind, Old)
"A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Education, Years)
"A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(Related: Experience, Life, Worth)