Oliver Wendell Holmes

Be polite and generous, but don't undervalue yourself. You will be useful, at any rate; you may just as well be happy, while you are about it.

It will take you a hundred or two more years to get decently humanized, after so many centuries of de-humanizing celibacy.

You inherit your notions from a set of priests that had no wives and no children, or none to speak of, and so let their humanity die out of them.

What's the use in our caring about hard words after this,—'atheists,' heretics, infidels, and the like? They're, after all, only the cinders picked up out of those heaps of ashes round the stumps of the old stakes where they used to burn …

There isn't a text in the Bible better worth keeping always in mind than that one, 'Judge not, that ye be not judged.' .

The Widow Rowens was now in the full bloom of ornamental sorrow.

We are very shy of asking questions of those who know enough to destroy with one word the hopes we live on.

All of us love companionship and sympathy; some of us may love them too much. All of us are more or less imaginative in our theology.

We forget that weakness is not in itself a sin. We forget that even cowardice may call for our most lenient judgment, if it spring from innate infirmity.

If a man has a genuine, sincere, hearty wish to get rid of his liberty, if he is really bent upon becoming a slave, nothing can stop him.

Treat bad men exactly as if they were insane.

Leverage is everything,—was what I used to say;—don't begin to pry till you have got the long arm on your side.

What a miserable thing it is to be poor.

O hearts that break and give no sign Save whitening lip and fading tresses!

A few can touch the magic string, And noisy Fame is proud to win them; Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them!

Talk about it as much as you like,—one's breeding shows itself nowhere more than in his religion.

How many have withered and wasted under as slow a torment in the walls of that larger Inquisition which we call Civilization!

Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable. 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!"

You may set it down as a truth which admits of few exceptions, that those who ask your opinion really want your praise, and will be contented with nothing less.

Memory is a net; one finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook; but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking.

It went to pieces all at once— All at once and nothing first, Just as bubbles do when they burst.

A general flavor of mild decay.

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, That was built in such a logical way It ran a hundred years to a day?

Little I ask, my wants are few; I only wish a hut of stone, (A very plain brown stone will do,) That I may call my own;— And close at hand is such a one, In yonder street that fronts the sun.