Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes

"A good and true woman is said to resemble a Cremona fiddle: age but increases its worth and sweetens its tone"

"If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it round. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't embrace trouble; that's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it."

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

"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"

"Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing."

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

"To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor."

"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"

"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"

"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."

"Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness."

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

"A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve."

"Fresh air is good if you do not take too much of it; most of the achievements and pleasures of life are in bad air."

"The mode in which the inevitable comes to pass is through effort."

"But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold."

"Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend."

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

"Old age is fifteen years older than I am."

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