Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. Quotes - Page 4

Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.

I firmly believe that if the whole material medica, as now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be better for mankind-and all the worse for the fishes.

The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men - from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms.

The man who is always worrying about whether or not his soul would be damned generally has a soul that isn't worth a damn.

But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.

I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.

A few can touch the magic string, and noisy fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them!

Fresh air is good if you do not take too much of it; most of the achievements and pleasures of life are in bad air.

The year is getting to feel rich, for his golden fruits are ripening fast, and he has a large balance in the barns, which are his banks. The members of his family have found out that he is well to do in the world. September is dressing herself in show of dahlias and splendid marigolds and starry zinnias. October, the extravagant sister, has ordered an immense amount of the most gorgeous forest tapestry for her grand reception.

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad.

For nothing burns with such amazing speed, As the dry sticks of a religious creed.

A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend.

Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel of the Resurrection.

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

The Indian is but a sketch in red crayon of a rudimental manhood. To the problem of his relation to the white race, there is one solution: extermination.

What a blessed thing it is, that Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left!

America is the only place where man is full-grown!

Simple people... are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them.

Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped past him.

See how he throws his baited lines about,/And plays his men as anglers play their trout.

What we most want to ask of our Maker is an unfolding of the divine purpose in putting human beings into conditions in which such numbers of them would be sure to go wrong.

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

The sea drowns out humanity and time. It has no sympathy with either, for it belongs to eternity; and of that it sings its monotonous song forever and ever.

Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else - very rarely to those who say to themselves, 'Go to, now, let us be a celebrated individual!'.

Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse. One comfort we have - Cincinnati sounds worse.