Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

About Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.:

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. was an American physician, poet, professor, lecturer, and author based in Boston. A member of the Fireside Poets, his peers acclaimed him as one of the best writers of the day. His most famous prose works are the "Breakfast-Table" series, which began with The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858). He was also an important medical reformer.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

The Amen of nature is always a flower.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Author Bio

  • NameOliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
  • DescriptionPoet, essayist, physician
  • BornAugust 29, 1809
  • DiedOctober 7, 1894
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPoet; Author; Novelist