Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. - Page 3

The truth is that the whole system of beliefs which comes in with the story of the fall of man ... is gently falling out of enlightened human intelligence.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. / Physician
Men
Atheism
Fall
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The sea drowns out humanity and time. It has no sympathy with either, for it belongs to eternity; and of that it sings its monotonous song forever and ever.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. / Physician
Forever
Sea
Song
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What a blessed thing it is, that Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left!
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. / Physician
Blessed
Chips
Criticism
Critics
Left
Writing
Authors
Contrived
Patented
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Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else - very rarely to those who say to themselves, 'Go to, now, let us be a celebrated individual!'.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. / Physician
Fame
Individual
Thinking
Celebrated
Let Us
Rarely
Something Else
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Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. / Physician
Death
Inspirational
Life
Music
Running
Ready
Time Always People
Time Music Always
Because
Die
Time Music People
Always
Why
Before
Them
Too
Often
Getting
Still
Runs
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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. / Physician
All Time
Book
Delay
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Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, and to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make an ideal.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. / Physician
Men
Ends
Philanthropy
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I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. / Physician
Inspirational
Life
Success
Action
Being Judged
Judged
Passion
Peril
Share
Life Time Man
Lived
Required
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Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel of the Resurrection.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. / Physician
Birthday
Smile
Angel
Keys
Resurrection
Wind
Brains
Case
Clocks
Closes
Winds
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I firmly believe that if the whole material medica, as now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be better for mankind-and all the worse for the fishes.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. / Physician
Funny
Humor
Believe
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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. / Physician
Business
Giving
Simplicity
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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 Sr. / Physician
Evil
Numbers
Would Be
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Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine shades! Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids! O, might I vole to some umbrageous clump,-- Depart,--be off,--excede,--evade,--erump!
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. / Physician
Maids
Might
Shade
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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 Sr. / Physician
Dawn
Gone
Twilight
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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. / Physician
Book
Long
Reading
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When I think of talking, it is of course with a woman. For talking at its best being an inspiration, it wants a corresponding divine quality of receptiveness, and where will you find this but in a woman?
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. / Physician
Women
Inspiration
Thinking
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Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that - one stitch at a time taken patiently and the pattern will come out all right like the embroidery.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. / Physician
Quilts
Time
Children
Taken
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Don't flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. / Physician
Friendship
Relationship
Contrary
Courtesy
Disagreeable
Holmes
Relation
Tact
Flatter
Nearer
On The Contrary
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Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor. But if a man hasn't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has, the worse for his patient.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. / Physician
Men
Science
Chamber
Common
Common Sense
Furniture
Patient
Plenty
Good Man More
First-Rate
Piece
Upper
Worse
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I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, 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. / Physician
Great
Heaven
Moving
Port
Sail
Sometimes
Wind
World
Against
Stand
Thing
Much
Anchor
Find
Direction
Drift
Lie
Great Thing
Must
Nor
Reach
Where
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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.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. / Physician
Death
Aggravated
Aggravation
Blow
Character
Facts
Given
Homicide
Might
Pun
Return
Verdict
Cause
Commonly
Judges
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Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. / Physician
Art
Life
Past
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We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were early implanted in his imagination; no matter how utterly his reason may reject them...
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. / Physician
Fear
Imagination
Men
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Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. / Physician
Men
Hurt
Mad
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The year is getting to feel rich, for his golden fruits are ripening fast, and he has a large balance in the barns, which are his banks. The members of his family have found out that he is well to do in the world. September is dressing herself in show of dahlias and splendid marigolds and starry zinnias. October, the extravagant sister, has ordered an immense amount of the most gorgeous forest tapestry for her grand reception.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. / Physician
Balance
Golden
Years
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As we grow older we think more and more of old persons and of old things and places. As to old persons, it seems as if we never know how much they have to tell until we are old ourselves and they have been gone twenty or thirty years. Once in a while we come upon some survivor of his or her generation that we have overlooked, and feel as if we had recovered one of the lost books of Livy or fished up the golden candlestick from the ooze of the Tiber.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. / Physician
Book
Thinking
Years
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When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe... that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas-- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment. As all life is an experiment. Every year if not every day we wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. / Physician
Freedom
Believe
Fighting
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Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. Quotes - Page 3

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