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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. [1809-1894] American

Rank: 11
Poet (with poems), Poet

Fireside poets, Humour, Romanticism, Transcendentalism, Victorian

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. was an American polymath based in Boston. A member of the Fireside Poets, his peers acclaimed him as one of the best writers of the day.

Friendship, Great, Love, Men, Wisdom, Home, Science, Beauty, Communication, Courage, Experience, Faith, Fear, Future, Good, Happiness, Imagination, Jealousy, Knowledge, Money, Morning, Music, Nature, Respect, Romantic, Time, Trust, Truth, Wedding

Quote	Tags	Rank
Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.	Home, Love	101
Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear.	Fear, Happiness, Jealousy, Love, Wedding	102
To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor.		103
The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.	Great, Romantic	104
The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.	Wisdom	105
I find 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.	Great	106
Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.	Good	107
There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise.	Friendship, Morning	108
Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out.	Music, Time	109
A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day.		110
It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.	Faith	111
Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.		112
The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.	Great, Men	113
Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.	Friendship	114
But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.	Friendship	115
Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way - and the fools know it.	Men	116
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.	Truth	117
Have the courage to act instead of react.	Courage	118
Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.	Communication	119
A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.	Experience	120
The mind of a bigot to the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it contracts.		121
The Amen of nature is always a flower.	Nature	122
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.	Friendship	123
I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.		124
Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don't you love a cushioned seat in a corner, by the fireside, with your slippers on your feet?	Home	125
Love prefers twilight to daylight.	Love	126
It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.	Knowledge, Wisdom	201
Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer.		202
Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.	Money, Trust	203
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?		204
The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.		205
Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.		206
Simple people... are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them.		207
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.		208
People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be 'consistent'.		209
Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future.	Beauty, Future, Wisdom	210
Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.	Men	211
Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor. But if a man hasn't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has, the worse for his patient.	Science	212
Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant.		213
We do not quit playing because we grow old, we grow old because we quit playing.		214
To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.		215
I like children; I like 'em, and I respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by them.	Respect	216
Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.	Friendship	217
Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse. One comfort we have - Cincinnati sounds worse.		218
Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.	Imagination	219
Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up.		220
Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding.		221
Don't be 'consistent', but be simply true.		222
A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.		223
Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.		224
Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light.		225
Apology is only egotism wrong side out.		226
A great calamity is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened.		301
Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.		302
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.	Science	303
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.		304
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.		305
Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us.		306
Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.		307
A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend.		308
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!		309
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.		310
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.		311
A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.		312
A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.		313
Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else - very rarely to those who say to themselves, 'Go to, now, let us be a celebrated individual!'.		314
A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.		315
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.		316
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.		317
The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think.		318
Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth.		319
Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.		320
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!		321

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