Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. Quotes

“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

topic:memoryforgetting

“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

topic:age

“Men, like peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before they begin to decay.”

― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

topic:age

“A great calamity, for instance, is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened.”

― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

topic:age

“Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.”

― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

topic:mind

“Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.”

― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

topic:mindthought

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

― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

topic:moneytrust

“But I can't help remembering that the world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.”

― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

topic:greatness

“Language!—the blood of the soul, Sir! into which our thoughts run and out of which they grow!”

― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., The Professor at the Breakfast-Table

topic:soullanguage

“Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.”

― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

topic:sinlie