Quotes from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Lord, bid war's trumpet cease; Fold the whole earth in peace.

To be master of any branch of knowledge, you must master those which lie next to it; and thus to know anything you must know all.

We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible.

A pair of substantial mammary glands have the advantage over the two hemispheres of the most learned professor's brain in the art of compounding a nutritive fluid for infants.

The woman about to become a mother, or with her newborn infant upon her bosom, should be the object of trembling care and sympathy wherever she bears her tender burden or stretches her aching limbs.... God forbid that any member of the profession to which she trusts her life, doubly precious at that eventful period, should hazard it negligently, unadvisedly or selfishly.

Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues.

A great man represents a great ganglion in the nerves of society, or, to vary the figure, a strategic point in the campaign of history, and part of his greatness consists in his being there.

People who make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered witticism.

Have faith and pursue the unknown end.

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.

Any tax is a discouragement and therefore a regulation so far as it goes.

The longer we live, the more we find we are like other persons.