Oliver Wendell Holmes

Don't ever think the poetry is dead in an old man because his forehead is wrinkled, or that his manhood has left him when his hand trembles! If they ever were there, they are there still!

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,

Did I not say to you a little while ago that the universe swam in an ocean of similitudes and analogies?

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 …

Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power; that is all.

I try his head occasionally as housewives try eggs,— give it an intellectual shake and hold it up to the light, so to speak, to see if it has life in it, actual or potential, or only contains lifeless albumen.

How many people live on the reputation of the reputation they might have made!

Mark this which I am going to say once for all: If I had not force enough to project a principle full in the face of the half dozen most obvious facts which seem to contradict it, I would think only in single file from this day forward.

Scientific knowledge, even in the most modest persons, has mingled with it a something which partakes of insolence. Absolute, peremptory facts are bullies, and those who keep company with them are apt to get a bullying habit of mind.

Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.

Though fortune scowl, though prudence interfere, One thing is certain: Love will triumph here! Lords of creation, whom your ladies rule,— The world's great masters, when you're out of school,— Learn the brief moral of our evening's play …

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 …

Everybody likes and respects self-made men. It is a great deal better to be made in that way than not to be made at all.

Some of the sharpest men in argument are notoriously unsound in judgment.

You can hire logic, in the shape of a lawyer, to prove anything that you want to prove.

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 …

Even in common people, conceit has the virtue of making them cheerful; the man who thinks his wife, his baby, his house, his horse, his dog, and himself severally unequalled, is almost sure to be a good-humored person, though liable to be …

When one has had all his conceit taken out of him, when he has lost all his illusions, his feathers will soon soak through, and he will fly no more.

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. It has come to you over a new route, by a new and express train of associations.

He must be a poor creature that does not often repeat himself.

All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called “facts.” They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.

When lawyers take what they would give And doctors give what they would take.

The brightest blades grow dim with rust, The fairest meadow white with snow.

To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.