Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quotes - Page 4

For my part I think it is a less evil that some criminals should escape, than that the government should play an ignoble part.

For him in vain the envious seasons roll Who bears eternal summer in his soul.

It takes me several days, after I get back to Boston, to realize that the reference "the president" refers to the president of Harvard and not to a minor official in Washington.

Any new formula which suddenly emerges in our consciousness has its roots in long trains of thought; it is virtually old when it first makes its appearance among the recognized growths of our intellect.

Leisure only means a chance to do other jobs that demand attention.

The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.

There was never an idea started that woke up men out of their stupid indifference but its originator was spoken of as a crank.

Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.

You make me chuckle when you say that you are no longer young, that you have turned twenty-four. A man is or may be young to after sixty, and not old before eighty.

Men, like peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before they begin to decay.

To know is not less than to feel.

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

We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.

If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it around. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it.

The minute a phrase, becomes current, it becomes an apology for not thinking accurately to the end of the sentence.

It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

Every man is an omnibus in which his ancestors ride.

To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.

We are all sentenced to capital punishment for the crime of living, and though the condemned cell of our earthly existence is but a narrow and bare dwelling-place, we have adjusted ourselves to it, and made it tolerably comfortable for the little while we are to be confined in it.

In my opinion, economists and sociologists are the people to whom we ought to turn more than we do for instruction in the grounds and foundations of all rational decisions.

I have always sought to guide the future-but it is very lonely sometimes trying to play God.

Apologizing - a very desperate habit - one that is rarely cured. Apology is only egotism wrong side out.

To rest upon a formula is a slumber that, prolonged, means death.

Every idea is an incitement. It offers itself for belief, and if believed it is acted on unless some other belief outweighs it or some failure of energy stifles the movement at its birth. The only difference between the expression of an opinion and an incitement is the speaker's enthusiasm for the result.

As for the excellent little wretches who grow up in what they are taught, with never a scruple or a query, ... they signify nothing in the intellectual life of the race.