Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes

Greatness is not in where we stand, but in what direction we are moving. We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it -- but sail we must and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Action;

Consciously or unconsciously we all strive to make the kind of a world we like.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Action;

Old age is fifteen years older than I am.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
- also attributed to Bernard Baruch in slightly different form

Age;

The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor great scholars great men.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Action;

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtaxed.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Accuracy;

The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Achievement;

We are all omnibuses in which our ancestors ride, and every now and then one of them sticks his head out and embarrasses us.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Ancestry;

The mind of the bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Bigotry;

Speak not too well of one who scarce will know
Himself transfigured in its roseate glow;
Say kindly of him what is, chiefly, true,
Remembering always he belongs to you;
Deal with him as a truant, if you will,
But claim him, keep him, call him brother still!
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Brotherhood;

Pretty much all the honest truth telling there is in the world is done by children.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Children;

Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Civilization;

I always say, as you know, that if my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them. It's my job.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Constitution;

A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Creativity;

To have doubted one's own first principles, is the mark of a civilized man.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Doubt;

Heredity is an omnibus in which all our ancestors ride, and every now and then one of them puts his head out and embarrasses us.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Heredity;

The first of all other virtues - for other people.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Humility;

Husband and wife come to look alike at last.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Husband;

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Ideas;

Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Ideas;

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

Ideals;

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtaxed.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Insanity;

A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Instinct;