Oliver Wendell Holmes
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Oliver Wendell Holmes was the name of two prominent men, father and son:...
book reading long
What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred?
kings book reading
The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library,'The medicines of the soul.
book reading heart
The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
book reading ideas
The ideas of the classics, so far as living, are our commonplaces. It is the modern books that give us the latest and most profound conceptions. It seems to me rather a lazy makeshift to mumble over the familiar.
aim
The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may thing what we like and say what we think.
fools men wise
Controversy equalizes fools and wise men - and the fools know it
conversation dreadful pathway stick
And when you stick on conversation's burrs, don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs.
honest telling truth
Pretty much all the honest truth telling in the world is done by children.
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.
ahead divided humankind people sit
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?
beware hope human
Beware how you take away hope from any human being.
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.
courtesy flatter friendship nearer necessary relation tact
Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.
fig life side simplicity
I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.