Oliver Wendell Holmes
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Oliver Wendell Holmes was the name of two prominent men, father and son:...
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Our brains our seventy year clocks, the angel of life winds them up once and for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hands of the angel of resurrection.
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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.
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Husband and wife come to look alike at last
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The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.
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Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtaxed.
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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.
respect
I like children; I like 'em, and I respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by them.
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The greatest tragedy in America is not the destruction of our natural resources, though that tragedy is great. The truly great tragedy is the destruction of our human resources by our failure to fully utilize our abilities, which means that most men and women go to their graves with their music still in them.
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The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.
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A good and true woman is said to resemble a Cremona fiddle: age but increases its worth and sweetens its tone
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The chief end of a man is to frame general ideas - and... no general idea is worth a damn.
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All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called ''facts.'' They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Who does not know fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact or two that they lead after them into decent company like so many bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at every ingenious suggestion, or convenient generalization, or pleasant fancy? I allow no ''facts'' at this table.
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A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.
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An artist that works in marble or colors has them all to himself and his tribe, but the man who molds his thoughts in verse has to employ the materials vulgarized by everybody's use, and glorify them by his handling