Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes

For me at least there came moments when faith wavered. But there is the great lesson and the great triumph: keep the fire burning until by and by out of the mass of sordid details there comes some result.

When you write in prose you say what you mean. When you write in rhyme you say what you must.

We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to.

A man must get a thing before he can forget it.

People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be "consistent."

When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as the poetry of sentences.

Men are idolaters and want something to look at and kiss and hug or throw themselves down before they always did they always will and if you don't make it of wood you must make it of words.

Apology - a desperate habit and one that is rarely cured.

Rough work iconoclasm but the only way to get at the truth.

When the style is fully formed if it has a sweet undersong we call it beautiful and the writer may do what he likes in words or syntax.

A general flavour of mild decay but nothing local as one may say.

Except in cases of necessity which are rare leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies they are ready enough to tell him.

Take your needle my child and work at your pattern it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that one stitch at a time taken patiently and the pattern will come out all right like embroidery.

Lawyers spend a great deal of time shovelling smoke.

rouble creates a capacity to handle it.

Faith as an intellectual state is self-reliance.

Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.

The reward of a general is not a bigger tent - but command.

Thou oh my country hast thy foolish ways Too apt to purr at every stranger's praise.

This is a court of law young man not a court of justice.

You commit a sin of omission if you do not utilize all the power that is within you. All men have claims on man and to the man with special talents this is a very special claim. It is required that a man take part in the actions and clashes of his time than the peril of being judged not to have lived at all.

The secret of my success is that at an early age I discovered I was not God.