Science is the topography of ignorance.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Science
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: Change, Consistency
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.
Man has his will,—but woman has her way!
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Good-breeding is surface Christianity.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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
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.
Age, like distance lends a double charm.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Charm, Aging, Age
If you wish to keep as well as possible, the less you think about your health the better.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Health
Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Learning
Man’s mind stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Ideas, Reading, Mind, Perception, Thinking, Attitude, Imagination
A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Ideas
Science—in other words, knowledge—is not the enemy of religion; for, if so, then religion would mean ignorance; but it is often the antagonist of school-divinity.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Science
The mortmain of theorists extinct in science clings as close as that of ecclesiastics defunct in law.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
This is an inquisitive age, and if we insist on piling up beyond a certain height knowledge which is in itself mere trash and lumber to a man whose life is to be one long fight with death and disease, there will be some sharp questions asked by and by, and our quick-witted people will perhaps find they can get along as well without the professor’s cap as without the bishop’s mitre and the monarch’s crown.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Knowledge
Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Friendship, Praise
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Jokes, Humor
We forget that weakness is not in itself a sin. We forget that even cowardice may call for our most lenient judgment, if it spring from innate infirmity.
—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: Truth, Children
A good soldier, like a good horse, cannot be of a bad color.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: The Military
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.
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: Success & Failure, Achievement, Value of Time, Time Management
We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were early implanted in his imagination; no matter how utterly his reason may reject them, he will still feel as the famous woman did about ghosts, “Je n’y crois pas, mais je les crains,”—“I don’t believe in them, but I am afraid of them, nevertheless”.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Belief, Superstition
The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Literature, Reading, Book, Books
The worst of a modern stylish mansion is that it has no place for ghosts.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Architecture
The greatest tragedy in America is not the destruction of our natural resources, though that tragedy is great. The truly great tragedy is the destruction of our human resources by our failure to fully utilize our abilities, which means that most men and women go to their graves with their music still in them.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Tragedy
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.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Thoughts, Thinking, Thought
And silence, like a poultice, comes to heal the blows of sound.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Silence
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.
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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