Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) was an American physician, professor, lecturer, and author.
Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard, Holmes briefly studied law before turning to the medical profession. As a teacher of medicine at Dartmouth and Harvard (where he later served as dean,) he initiated and advocated far-reaching medical reforms.
Throughout his life, Holmes wrote poetry, novels, and essays. His contemporaries, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell, regarded Holmes as one of the best writers of the 19th century. His most famous literary works are the witty essays known as “table talks”—The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858,) The Professor of the Breakfast-Table (1860,) and The Poet of the Breakfast-Table (1872.) Holmes also produced a biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1884.)
Holmes’s son was the renowned American jurist and Civil War officer, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr..
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell him.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Friendship, Feelings
A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. It has come to you over a new route, by a new and express train of associations.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Writing or printing is like shooting with a rifle; you may hit your reader’s mind, or miss it;—but talking is like playing at a mark with the pipe of an engine; if it is within reach, and you have time enough, you can’t help hitting it.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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.
If a man has a genuine, sincere, hearty wish to get rid of his liberty, if he is really bent upon becoming a slave, nothing can stop him.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
The longing for certainty … is in every human mind. But certainty is generally illusion.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Uncertainty, Doubt
Science is the topography of ignorance.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Science
Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day, like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Truth
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
Leverage is everything; don’t begin to pry till you have got the long arm on your side.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
What a comfort a dull but kindly man is, to be sure, at times! A ground glass shade over a gas-light does not bring more solace to our dazzled eyes than such an one to our minds.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is glorious; but a weak flavor of genius in an essentially common person is detestable. It spoils the grand neutrality of a commonplace character, as the rinsings of an unwashed wineglass spoil a draught of fair water.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Genius
Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall;
A mother’s secret hope outlives them all.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Motherhood, Mothers, Youth
I talk half the time to find out my own thoughts, as a school-boy turns his pockets inside out to see what is in them. One brings to light all sorts of personal property he had forgotten in his inventory.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
The longer we live, the more we find we are like other persons.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Equality
Pick my left pocket of its silver dime, but spare the right,—it holds my golden time!
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Time
Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Money, Trust
Man’s mind stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Thinking, Imagination, Reading, Ideas, Perception, Attitude
Truth is the breath of life to human society. It is the food of the immortal spirit. Yet a single word of it may kill a man as suddenly as a drop of prussic acid.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
A good and true woman is said to resemble a Cremona fiddle—age but increases its worth and sweetens its tone.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Age, Aging
What I call a good patient is one who, having found a good physician, sticks to him till he dies.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man’s upper chamber, if it has common sense on the ground floor.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Common Sense, Science
A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Aging, Age
Life is a great bundle of little things.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: One Step at a Time
All is holy where devotion kneels.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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
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: Criticism, Critics
Now habit is a labor-saving invention which enables a man to get along with less fuel.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
He must be a poor creature that does not often repeat himself. Imagine the author of the excellent piece of advice, “Know thyself,” never alluding to that sentiment again during the course of a protracted existence!
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Speech, Thinking, Thoughts, Conversation, Thought
Nobody talks much that doesn’t say unwise things,—things he did not mean to say; as no person plays much without striking a false note sometimes.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Children, Truth
A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Time Management, Achievement, Success & Failure, Value of Time
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
Man has will, but woman has her way.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
The mortmain of theorists extinct in science clings as close as that of ecclesiastics defunct in law.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
With most men life is like backgammon—half skill and half luck.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Life
It’s faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes life worth looking at.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Faith, Enthusiasm
Beware how you take away hope from any human being.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Hope
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