Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

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

“Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped past him.”

“The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.”

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

“Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer.”

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

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

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

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

“A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.”

“A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.”

“Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.”

“Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.”

“Why can't somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says, and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks?”

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

“The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.”

“Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us.”

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

“Have the courage to act instead of react.”

“Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.”