Quotes from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica as now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
For me, at least, there came moments when faith wavered. But there is the great lesson and the great triumph: keep the fire burning until, by and by, out of the mass of sordid details there comes some result.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
A minister is coming down every generation nearer and nearer to the common level of the useful citizen - no oracle at all, but a man of more than average moral instincts, who if he knows anything, knows how little he knows.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Imitation is a necessity of human nature.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that; one stitch at a time taken patiently, and the pattern will come out all right, like embroidery.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
When the style is fully formed, if it has a sweet undersong, we call it beautiful, and the writer may do what he likes in words or syntax.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Liberty is often a heavy burden on a man. It involves the necessity for perpetual choice which is the kind of labor men have always dreaded.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
I think it not improbable that man, like the grub that prepares a chamber for the winged thing it never has seen but is to be - that man may have cosmic destinies that he does not understand.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.