Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

“Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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 latt...”

“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!”

“Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.”

“The Amen of nature is always a flower.”

“To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor.”

“I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes agains...”

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

“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.”

“Apology is only egotism wrong side out.”

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

“A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.”

“A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.”

“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!”

“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.”

“The mind of a bigot to the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it contracts.”

“The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men - from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms.”