Oliver Wendell Holmes
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Oliver Wendell Holmes was the name of two prominent men, father and son:...
history history-and-historians page pound worth
A page of history is worth a pound of logic.
common common-sense furniture ground piece science
Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if it has common sense on the ground floor.
honest telling truth
Pretty much all the honest truth telling in the world is done by children.
achievement inevitable mode pass
The mode in which the inevitable comes to pass is through effort.
awful begins bid brothers chorus dead death destinies glory good great joy lent life note orchestra passion powers seen sound unseen youth
Our dead brothers still live for us and bid us think of life, not death / of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and glory of Spring. As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil, our trumpets, sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.
chips contrived critics
Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics of the chips that were left.
men revolutions-and-revolutionaries
Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.
bundle great life
Life is a great bundle of little things
action judged life man passion peril required share
Life is action and passion; therefore, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of the time, at peril of being judged not to have lived.
alike fatal homicide language legitimate life results treatment violent word
Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide --that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life --are alike forbidden.
banks customers keeps lending minutes miser wants whose
Old time, in whose banks we deposit our notes, Is a miser who always wants guineas for groats; He keeps all his customers still in arrears By lending them minutes and charging them years
expectation large neighbors reason suspect true
Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our father's have done them or our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a large part than what we suspect of what we think.
adding chief form general man science worth
I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions - adding that no general proposition is worth a damn.
call doctors found good patient sticks till
What I call a good patient is one who, having found a good physician, sticks to him till he dies.