Oliver Wendell Holmes quotes · page 2

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Oliver Wendell Holmes

Nature
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 against it, but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
4.8 · 49 votes · 122 reads
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Science and Technology
I firmly believe that if the whole material medical could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind, and all the worse for the sea.
4.0 · 22 votes · 116 reads
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Society
I should like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a gorilla that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of.
3.8 · 54 votes · 133 reads
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Nature
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.
3.3 · 64 votes · 176 reads
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Society
In walking, the will and the muscles are so accustomed to working together and performing their task with so little expenditure of force that the intellect is left comparatively free.
3.8 · 5 votes · 94 reads
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Defects
Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.
3.7 · 42 votes · 191 reads
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Nature
It is faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth looking at.
3.8 · 15 votes · 108 reads
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Various
It is just the little difference between the good and the best that makes the difference between the artist and the artisan. It is just the little touches after the average man would quit that makes the master's fame.
3.1 · 39 votes · 105 reads
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Various
It is like the seed put in the soil - the more one sows, the greater the harvest.
3.2 · 22 votes · 180 reads
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Thought and Reason
It is psychological law that whatever we desire to accomplish we must impress upon the subjective or subconscious mind.
4.6 · 25 votes · 13 reads
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Virtues
It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
5.0 · 59 votes · 181 reads
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Time
It is the youth who sees a great opportunity hidden in just these simple services, who sees a very uncommon situation, a humble position, who gets on in the world.
4.1 · 49 votes · 51 reads
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Various
It is those who have this imperative demand for the best in their natures, and who will accept nothing short of it, that holds the banners of progress, that set the standards, the ideals, for others.
4.2 · 9 votes · 5 reads
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Feelings
It is very lonely sometimes, trying to play God.
3.3 · 36 votes · 59 reads
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Feelings
It is what we do easily and what we like to do that we do well.
4.5 · 34 votes · 165 reads
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Feelings
It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes life worth living.
3.8 · 43 votes · 155 reads
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Virtues
Knowledge like timber shouldn't be mush use till they are seasoned.
4.6 · 57 votes · 97 reads
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Various
Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide -that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life -are alike forbidden.
4.9 · 9 votes · 143 reads
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Thought and Reason
Little-minded people's thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve.
3.4 · 33 votes · 116 reads
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Feelings
Love is the master key which opens the gates of happiness.
3.2 · 42 votes · 74 reads
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Time
Love prefers twilight to daylight.
4.4 · 14 votes · 106 reads
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Various
Make it a life-rule to give your best to whatever passes through your hands. Stamp it with your manhood. Let superiority be your trademark...
4.7 · 30 votes · 5 reads
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Various
Man becomes a slave to his constantly repeated acts. What he at first chooses, at last compels.
4.2 · 35 votes · 154 reads
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Thought and Reason
Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, and to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make an ideal.
3.7 · 16 votes · 97 reads
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Thought and Reason
Man's mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.
4.7 · 16 votes · 78 reads
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Feelings
Many a man has finally succeeded only because he has failed after repeated efforts. If he had never met defeat he would never have known any great victory.
4.7 · 57 votes · 196 reads
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Thought and Reason
Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.
3.7 · 6 votes · 49 reads
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Thought and Reason
Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.
4.7 · 28 votes · 97 reads
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Feelings
Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them.
4.8 · 20 votes · 98 reads
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Art and Culture
Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.
3.4 · 64 votes · 105 reads
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Society
No employer today is independent of those about him. He cannot succeed alone, no matter how great his ability or capital. Business today is more than ever a question of cooperation.
4.1 · 19 votes · 26 reads
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Feelings
No man can be ideally successful until he has found his place. Like a locomotive he is strong on the track, but weak anywhere else.
3.5 · 41 votes · 34 reads
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Various
No man fails who does his best...
3.4 · 9 votes · 113 reads
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Various
No man is beaten until his hope is annihilated, his confidence gone, As long as a man faces life hopefully, confidently, triumphantly, he is not a failure; he is not beaten until he turns his back on life.
3.0 · 63 votes · 4 reads
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Feelings
No young man starting in life could have better capital than plenty of friends. They will strengthen his credit, support him in every great effort, and make him what, unaided, he could never be. Friends of the right sort will help him more - to be happy a
3.3 · 24 votes · 30 reads
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Various
Nothing else so destroys the power to stand alone as the habit of leaning upon others. If you lean, you will never be strong or original. Stand alone or bury your ambition to be somebody in the world.
4.8 · 37 votes · 195 reads
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Art and Culture
Old books, you know well, are books of the world's youth, and new books are the fruits of its age.
4.6 · 18 votes · 58 reads
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Society
Opportunities? They are all around us... There is power lying latent everywhere waiting for the observant eye to discover it.
3.9 · 34 votes · 173 reads
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Thought and Reason
Our brains our seventy year clocks, the angel of life winds them up once and for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hands of the angel of resurrection.
4.7 · 22 votes · 32 reads
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Time
Our destiny changes with our thought; we shall become what we wish to become, do what we wish to do, when our habitual thought corresponds with our desire.
4.8 · 61 votes · 26 reads
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Page 2 of 5 · 161 quotes

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