Quotes from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Society is always trying in some way to grind us down to a single flat surface.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
To know is not less than to feel.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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, Jr.
The great act of faith is when a man decides that he is not God.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Any tax is a discouragement and therefore a regulation so far as it goes.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The man flaps about with a bunch of feathers: the woman goes to work softly with a cloth.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirm the worth of life as an end in itself, as against the saints who deny it.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
I dare say that I have worked off my fundamental formula on you that the chief end of man is to frame general propositions and that no general proposition is worth a damn.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.