Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quotes - Page 5

The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort.

With all humility, I think, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." Infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one's neighbor as one's self. If you want to hit a bird on the wing you must have all your will in focus, you must not be thinking about yourself, and equally, you must not be thinking about your neighbor; you must be living with your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing.

To brag little, to lose well, / To crow gently if in luck, / To pay up, to own up, / To shut up if beaten, / Are the virtues of a sportingman.

The thing I want to do is put as many new ideas into the law as I can, to show how particular solutions involve general theory, and to do it with style. I should like to be admitted to be the greatest jurist in the world.

The difference between gossip and philosophy lies only in one's way of taking a fact.

Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.

Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues.

Young feller, you will never appreciate the potentialities of the English language until you have heard a Southern mule driver search the soul of a mule.

In order to know whether a human being is young or old, offer it food of different kinds at short intervals. If young, it will eat anything at any hour of the day or night.

Nothing can be so perfect while we possess it as it will seem when remembered.

The riders in a race do not stop when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill. There is time to hear the kind voices of friends and say to oneself, The work is done.

A good soldier, like a good horse, cannot be of a bad color.

On the whole, I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirms the worth of life as an end in itself, as against the saints who deny it.

Carve every word before you let it fall.

Even the wisest woman you talk to is ignorant of something you may know, but an elegant woman never forgets her elegance.

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

We must think things not words, or at least we must constantly translate our words into the facts for which they stand, if we are to keep to the real and the true.

It is perfectly easy to be original by violating the laws of decency and the canons of good taste.

And silence, like a poultice, comes To heal the blows of sound.

Longevity is having a chronic disease - and taking care of it.

The joy of life is to put out one's power in some natural and useful or harmless way. There is no other. And the real misery is not to do this.

Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned.

To be master of any branch of knowledge, you must master those which lie next to it, and thus to know anything you must know all.

Under bad manners, as under graver faults, lies very commonly an overestimate of our special individuality, as distinguished from our generic humanity.

From forty to fifty a man must move upward, or the natural falling off in the vigor of life will carry him rapidly downward.