Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. Quotes
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Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.
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The Indian is but a sketch in red crayon of a rudimental manhood. To the problem of his relation to the white race, there is one solution: extermination.
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Seventeen hundred and fifty-five. Georgius Secundus was then alive,-- Snuffy old drone from the German hive.
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Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad.
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Yes, child of suffering, thou may'st well be sure He who ordained the Sabbath loves the poor!
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Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear.
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The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library,'The medicines of the soul.
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A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day.
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No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.
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As we grow older we think more and more of old persons and of old things and places. As to old persons, it seems as if we never know how much they have to tell until we are old ourselves and they have been gone twenty or thirty years. Once in a while we come upon some survivor of his or her generation that we have overlooked, and feel as if we had recovered one of the lost books of Livy or fished up the golden candlestick from the ooze of the Tiber.
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Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped past him.
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Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
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The sea drowns out humanity and time. It has no sympathy with either, for it belongs to eternity; and of that it sings its monotonous song forever and ever.
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The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.
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See how he throws his baited lines about,/And plays his men as anglers play their trout.
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The man who is always worrying about whether or not his soul would be damned generally has a soul that isn't worth a damn.
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For nothing burns with such amazing speed, As the dry sticks of a religious creed.
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Learn the sweet magic of a cheerful face.
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Why can't somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says, and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks?
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I hate paying taxes. But I love the civilization they give me
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Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.
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The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men - from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms.
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To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.
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Youth longs and manhood strives, but age remembers.
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The best servant does his work unseen.
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People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be 'consistent'.
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What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred?
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Trouble makes us one with every human being in the world - and unless we touch others, we're out of touch with life.
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Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.
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Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light.
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Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
- Born: August 29, 1809
- Died: October 7, 1894
- Occupation: Physician