Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Quotes
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What a blessed thing it is, that Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left!
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Apology is only egotism wrong side out.
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Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.
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There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise.
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Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us.
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Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.
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A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.
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Have the courage to act instead of react.
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Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light.
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Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.
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Memory is a net: one finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook, but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking.
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Don't be 'consistent', but be simply true.
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Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding.
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Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.
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We do not quit playing because we grow old, we grow old because we quit playing.
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The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.
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Don't flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.
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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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I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions - adding that no general proposition is worth a damn.
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Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel of the Resurrection.
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A great calamity is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened.
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A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.
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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.
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Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.