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

A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

A great calamity is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

A new untruth is better than an old truth.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

A person is always startled when he hears himself called old for the first time.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

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.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Apology is only egotism wrong side out.
Oliver Wendell Holmes


Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Beware how you take away hope from another human being.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse. One comfort we have - Cincinnati sounds worse.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Controversy equalizes fools and wise men - and the fools know it.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Don't be "consistent" but be simple true.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

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?
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end.
Oliver Wendell Holmes