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.
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
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
Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Children, Truth
Why can’t somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says, and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks?
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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.
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.
Every man is an omnibus in which his ancestors ride.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Family, Ancestry, Ancestors
I hate being placed on committees. They are always having meetings at which half are absent and the rest late.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Beauty is the index of a larger fact than wisdom.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Beauty
Lord, bid war’s trumpet cease;
Fold the whole earth in peace.
—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
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.
The freeman, casting with unpurchased hand the vote that shakes the turrets of the land.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Democracy
In walking, the will and the muscles are so accustomed to working together and performing their task with so little expenditure of force that the intellect is left comparatively free.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Cooperation, Help
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, Divinity, Faith
The true essentials of a feast are only fun and feed.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
A child’s education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Children
Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Fashion
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
Speak not too well of one who scarce will know
Himself transfigured in its roseate glow;
Say kindly of him what is, chiefly, true,
Remembering always he belongs to you;
Deal with him as a truant, if you will,
But claim him, keep him, call him brother still!
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may thing what we like and say what we think.
—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.
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
When I think of talking, it is of course with a woman. For talking at its best being an inspiration, it wants a corresponding divine quality of receptiveness, and where will you find this but in a woman?
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Talking
It is very grand to “die in harness,” but it is very pleasant to have the tight straps unbuckled and the heavy collar lifted from the neck and shoulders.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Aging
Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall;
A mother’s secret hope outlives them all.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Mothers, Youth, Motherhood
The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water-bath is to the body.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Music
Self-love is a cup without any bottom; you might pour all the great lakes into it, and never fill it up.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Self-love
Then there is that glorious Epicurean paradox, uttered by my friend, the Historian in one of his flashing moments: Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Luxury, America
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