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Quotations by Author

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 - 1894)
US author & physician [more author details]

Showing quotations 1 to 20 of 21 total

A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.: Oliver Wendell Holmes
- More quotations on: [Age]
Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite.: Oliver Wendell Holmes
I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.: Oliver Wendell Holmes
It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.: Oliver Wendell Holmes
- More quotations on: [Listening]
Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, and to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make an ideal.: Oliver Wendell Holmes
Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.: Oliver Wendell Holmes
- More quotations on: [Ideas]
Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth.: Oliver Wendell Holmes
Science is good furniture for one's upper chamber, if there is common sense below.: Oliver Wendell Holmes
Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.: Oliver Wendell Holmes
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
- More quotations on: [Music]
The great thing in this world is not so much where you stand, as in what direction you are moving.: Oliver Wendell Holmes
To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old.: Oliver Wendell Holmes
- More quotations on: [Age]
To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad.: Oliver Wendell Holmes
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
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
- More quotations on: [Men And Women]
Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one.: Oliver Wendell Holmes, "The Poet at the Breakfast-Table", 1872
- More quotations on: [Life]
A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.: Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 1858
- More quotations on: [Quotations]
Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them.: Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 1858
- More quotations on: [Friendship]
Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned.: Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 1858
- More quotations on: [Knowledge]
I find the great in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it,-but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.: Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 1891

Showing quotations 1 to 20 of 21 total

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