Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes

"People who make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered witticism."

"The rule of joy and the law of duty seem to me all one."

"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!"

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

"People can be divided into two classes: those who go ahead and do something, and those who sit still and inquire, why wasn't it done the other way?"

"I confess that altruistic and cynically selfish talk seem to me about equally unreal. With all humility, I think whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one's neighbor as one's self. If you want to hit a bird on the wing you must have all your will in focus, you must not be thinking about yourself, and equally, you must not be thinking about your neighbor; you must be living with your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing."

"Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke."

"This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice."

"A man is usually more careful of his money than of his principles."

"The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer."

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

"Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light."

"For I say unto you in all sadness of conviction that to think great thoughts you must be heroes as well as idealists. Only when you have worked alone -- when you have felt around you are a black gulf of solitude more isolating than that which surrounds the dying man, and in hope and despair have trusted to your own unshaken will -- then only can you gain the secret isolated joy of the thinker, who knows that a hundred years after he is dead and forgotten men who have never heard of him will be moving to the measure of his thought -- the subtle rapture of postponed power, which the world knows not because it has no external trappings, but which to his prophetic vision is more real than that which commands an army. And if this joy should not be yours, still it is only thus you can know that you have done what lay in you to do -- can say that you have lived, and be ready for the end."

"The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions."

"You commit a sin of omission if you do not utilize all the power that is within you. All men have claims on man, and to the man with special talents, this is a very special claim. It is required that a man take part in the actions and clashes of his"

"Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts."

"The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books."

"What I call a good patient is one who, having found a good physician, sticks to him till he dies."

"The very minute a thought is threatened with publicity it seems to shrink towards mediocrity"

"It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living."