Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. Quotes

Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don't you love a cushioned seat in a corner, by the fireside, with your slippers on your feet?

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

Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse. One comfort we have - Cincinnati sounds worse.

Science is the topography of ignorance.

I would never use a long word, even, where a short one would answer the purpose.

The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think.

No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor. But if a man hasn't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has, the worse for his patient.

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.

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

Yes, child of suffering, thou may'st well be sure He who ordained the Sabbath loves the poor!

When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe... that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas-- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment. As all life is an experiment. Every year if not every day we wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge.

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