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.
You commit a sin of omission if you do not utilize all the power that is within you. All men have claims on man, and to the man with special talents, this is a very special claim. It is required that a man take part in the actions and clashes of his time that the peril of being judged not to have lived at all.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Power
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
The brain women never interest us like the heart women; white roses please less than red.
—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.
those who ask your opinion really want your praise, and will be contented with nothing less.
—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.
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 mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Ideas
People can be divided into two classes: those who go ahead and do something, and those who sit still and inquire, why wasn’t it done the other way?
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Humanity
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
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
Man’s mind stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Reading, Imagination, Thinking, Attitude, Ideas, Perception
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
To obtain a man’s opinion of you, make him mad.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Every man is an omnibus in which his ancestors ride.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Family
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
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
Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Truth
There is a little plant called reverence in the corner of my soul’s garden, which I love to have watered once a week.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Faith, as an intellectual state, is self-reliance.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Faith, Belief
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.
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: Live, People, Carpe-diem, Music
Man has his will,—but woman has her way!
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Age, Aging
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
Beware how you take away hope from any human being.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Hope
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
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.
Science is the topography of ignorance.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Science
Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Change
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: Reading, Book, Literature, Books
Man has will, but woman has her way.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power; that is all.
—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.
For there we loved, and where we love is home,
Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Love, Home
Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Memory
Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Topics: Thinking, Thought, Thoughts, Conversation, Speech
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.
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.
All is holy where devotion kneels.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Deepak Chopra Indian-born American Physician
Viktor Frankl Austrian Psychiatrist
Wilhelm Stekel Austrian Physician
William Osler Canadian Physician
Georges Clemenceau French Head of State
Julien Offray de La Mettrie French Physician
Edward de Bono British Psychologist, Writer
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow American Poet
William Dean Howells American Writer, Critic
Ralph Waldo Emerson American Philosopher