 |
Mother
|
|
Youth fades; love droops, the leaves of friendship fall;
A mother's secret hope outlives them all.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
|
|
Music
|
|
|
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
|
|
Opinion
|
|
|
People talk fundamentals and superlatives and then make some changes of detail.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
|
|
Ordinary
|
|
|
Nothing is so commonplace has the wish to be remarkable.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
|
|
Perception
|
|
|
Simple people... are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
|
|
Personality
|
|
|
It is by no means certain that our individual personality is the single inhabitant of these our corporeal frames... We all do things both awake and asleep which surprise us. Perhaps we have cotenants in this house we live in.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Guardian Angel
|
|
Pollution
|
|
|
Fresh air is good if you do not take too much of it; most of the achievements and pleasures of life are in bad air.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
|
|
Power
|
|
|
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
|
|
Praise
|
|
|
Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
|
|
Prejudice
|
|
|
The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it will contract.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
|
|
Professionalism
|
|
|
Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
|
|
Prophecy
|
|
|
The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
|
|
Reading
|
|
|
Old books, you know well, are books of the world's youth, and new books are the fruits of its age.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
|
|
|
The most foolish kind of a book is a kind of leaky boat on the sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyhow.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
|
|
|
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
|
|
Remembrance
|
|
|
Our dead brothers still live for us and bid us think of life, not death--of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and glory of Spring. As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil, our trumpets, sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
|
|
Reputation
|
|
|
How many people live on the reputation of the reputation they might have made!
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
|
|
Retirement
|
|
|
Love prefers twilight to daylight.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
|
|
|
Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don you love a cushioned seat in a corner, by the fireside, with your slippers on your feet?
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
|
|
Revolution
|
|
|
Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
|
|
Rules
|
|
|
Young men know the rules, but old men know the exceptions.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
|
|
Silence
|
|
|
And Silence, like a poultice, comes
To heal the blows of sound.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
|
|
Sin
|
|
|
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits them all.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
|
|
|
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
|
|
Society
|
|
|
Society is always trying in some way to grind us down to a single flat surface.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
|
Books by and about Oliver Wendell Holmes