Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Quotes

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Youth fades, love droops, the leaves of friendship fall; A mother's secret hope outlives them all.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Professor at the Breakfast Table, 1859)

Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (Over The Teacups, 1891)

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Poet at the Breakfast Table, 1872)

A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 1858)

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.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Professor at the Breakfast Table, 1859)

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Poet at the Breakfast Table, 1872)

Dream on!
Death only grasps; to live is to pursue,
Dream on! there 's nothing but illusion true!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Old Prayer, 1861)

Many people die with their music still in them. Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it time runs out.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (Quoted in The Reader's Digest - Vol. 87, 1965)

Don't ever think the poetry is dead in an old man because his forehead is wrinkled, or that his manhood has left him when his hand trembles! If they ever WERE there, they ARE there still!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 1858)

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 1858)

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. It has come to you over a new route, by a new and express train of associations.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 1858)

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Poet at the Breakfast Table, 1872)

Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (A Mortal Antipathy, 1885)

I talk half the time to find out my own thoughts, as a school-boy turns his pockets inside out to see what is in them. One brings to light all sorts of personal property he had forgotten in his inventory.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Poet at the Breakfast Table, 1872)

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.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 1858)

The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (Quoted in Educational Foundations, 1915)

Beliefs must be lived in for a good while, before they accommodate themselves to the soul's wants, and wear loose enough to be comfortable.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (Elsie Venner, 1859)

There's nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Deacon's Masterpiece, 1858)

Leverage is everything, was what I used to say; don't begin to pry till you have got the long arm on your side.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (Elsie Venner, 1859)

A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (Quoted in The Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1899)

A few can touch the magic string, and noisy fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them! 

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 1858)

Of course everybody likes and respects self-made men. It is a great deal better to be made in that way than not to be made at all.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 1858)

You may set it down as a truth which admits of few exceptions, that those who ask your opinion really want your praise, and will be contented with nothing less.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 1858)

You can never be too cautious in your prognosis, in the view of the great uncertainty of the course of any disease not long watched, and the many unexpected turns it may take.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (Speech in Harvard University, 1858)

Most persons have died before they expire, died to all earthly longings, so that the last breath is only, as it were, the locking of the door of the already deserted mansion.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Professor at the Breakfast Table, 1859)

What refuge is there for the victim who is possessed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to read a hundred?

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

I like children, he said to me one day at table. I like 'em, and I respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by them.
Variant: Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Poet at the Breakfast Table, 1872)

I find that the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it - but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 1858)

You inherit your notions from a set of priests that had no wives and no children, or none to speak of, and so let their humanity die out of them... It will take you a hundred or two more years to get decently humanized, after so many centuries of de-humanizing celibacy.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (Elsie Venner, 1859)

Lord of all being, thronèd afar,
Thy glory flames from sun and star;
Center and soul of every sphere,
Yet to each loving heart how near!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (Lord of All Being, 1848)

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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Biography

Born: August 29, 1809
Died: October 7, 1894

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. was an American physician, professor and author. He was well known and revered by his contemporary peers and he quickly gained international fame.

Top 10 Quotes

Notable Works

Old Ironsides (1830)
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
(1858)
Elsie Venner (1859)
The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859)
The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872)

Picture Quotes


Related Authors
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (Son)