Quotes By Oliver Wendell Holmes

Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.

He has half the deed done who has made a beginning.

The Amen of nature is always a flower.

Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light.

Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.

Memory is a net: one that finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook, but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking.

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

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

Every idea is an incitement... Eloquence may set fire to reason.

Why can't somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says, and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks.

Every calling is great when greatly pursued.

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.

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

A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day.

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

Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant.

Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.

The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.

The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.

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

The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.

It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.

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

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

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.

People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be 'consistent'.

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

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