Oliver Wendell Quotes

"A man over ninety is a great comfort to all his elderly neighbors: he is a picket-guard at the extreme outpost; and the young folks of sixty and seventy feel that the enemy must get by him before he can come near their camp."

"What a comfort a dull but kindly person is, to be sure, at times! A ground-glass shade over a gas-lamp does not bring more solace to our dazzled eyes than such a one to our minds."

"Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite"

"I don't generally feel anything until noon, then it's time for my nap."

"Even the wisest woman you talk to is ignorant of something you may know, but an elegant woman never forgets her elegance."

"The greatest act of faith is when a man understands he is not God."

"Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads."

"We love the precepts for the teacher's sake."

"I should like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a gorilla that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of."

"People talk fundamentals and superlatives and then make some changes of detail."

"With effervescing opinions, the quickest way to let them get flat is to let them get exposed to the air"

"Don't be ""consistent"" but be simple true."

"Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits them all."

"A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend"

"Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don you love a cushioned seat in a corner, by the fireside, with your slippers on your feet?"

"If truth were not often suggested by error, if old implements could not be adjusted to new uses, human progress would be slow"

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

"Little-minded people's thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve."

"A person is always startled when he hears himself called old for the first time."

"Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force."