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!
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Critics, Criticism
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?
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Retirement
Every calling is great when greatly pursued.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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 sentiment of love, the sentiment of maternity, the sentiment of the paramount obligation of the parent to the child as having called it into existence, enhanced just in proportion to the power and knowledge of the one and the weakness and ignorance of the other.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Ambition, Mothers Day
How many women are born too finely organized in sense and soul for the highway they must walk with feet unshod! Life is adjusted to the wants of the stronger sex. There are plenty of torrents to be crossed in its journey; but their stepping-stones are measured by the strides of men, and not of women.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Woman
Memory is a net; one finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook; but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Memory
Old Time, in whose banks we deposit our notes,
Is a miser who always wants guineas for groats;
He keeps all his customers still in arrears
By lending them minutes and charging them years.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Time
Just as a particular soil wants some one element to fertilize it, just as the body in some conditions has a kind of famine for one special food, so the mind has its wants, which do not always call for what is best, but which know themselves and are as peremptory as the salt-sick sailor’s call for a lemon or a raw potato.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Mind
Faith implies the disbelief of a lesser fact in favor of a greater.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Faith, Belief
Beware how you take away hope from any human being.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Hope
Men are idolaters and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you don’t make it out of wood, you must make it out of words.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Pick my left pocket of its silver dime, but spare the right,—it holds my golden time!
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Time
It is a good plan to have a book with you in all places and at all times. If you are presently without, hurry without delay to the nearest shop and buy one of mine.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Books
Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues. It is good to abstain, and teach others to abstain, from all that is sinful or hurtful. But making a business of it leads to emaciation of character, unless one feeds largely also on the more nutritious diet of active sympathetic benevolence.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Virtue
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.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Insanity, Sanity, Stupidity
Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable. 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!”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Thinking, One liners, Posterity, Wishes
We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to, in virtue of our endowments
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Realistic Expectations, Expectations, Realization, Acceptance, Awareness
Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Truth, Children
Self-abnegation, that rare virtue, that good men preach and good women practice.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that; one stitch at a time taken patiently, and the pattern will come out all right like the embroidery.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: One Step at a Time
Apologizing.—A very desperate habit,—one that is rarely cured. Apology is only egotism wrong side out. Nine times out of ten, the first thing a man’s companion knows of his shortcoming is from his apology. It is mighty presumptuous on your part to suppose your small failures of so much consequence that you must make a talk about them.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Excuses
God’s plan made a hopeful beginning. But man spoiled his chances by sinning. We trust that the story will end in God’s glory. But, at present, the other side’s winning.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Sin
Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Friendship
Some years before birth, advertise for a couple of parents both belonging to long-lived families.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Advertising
One unquestioned text we read, All doubt beyond, all fear above; Nor crackling pile nor cursing creed Can burn or blot it: God is Love.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: God, Faith, Divinity
Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: People, Carpe-diem, Live, Music
those who ask your opinion really want your praise, and will be contented with nothing less.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Now habit is a labor-saving invention which enables a man to get along with less fuel.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Be polite and generous, but don’t undervalue yourself. You will be useful, at any rate; you may just as well be happy, while you are about it.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
I think you will find that people who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be “consistent.” But a great many things we say can be made to appear contradictory, simply because they are partial views of a truth, and may often look unlike at first, as a front view of a face and its profile often do.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Consistency, Change
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Deepak Chopra Indian-born American Physician
- Edward de Bono British Psychologist, Writer
- Julien Offray de La Mettrie French Physician, Philosopher
- William Osler Canadian Physician
- Viktor Frankl Austrian Psychiatrist
- Georges Clemenceau French Statesman
- Wilhelm Stekel Austrian Physician
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow American Poet
- William Dean Howells American Writer, Critic
- Ralph Waldo Emerson American Philosopher
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