Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s Quotes

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.

Men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government.

Nothing is so commonplace has the wish to be remarkable.

On the whole, I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirms the worth of life as an end in itself, as against the saints who deny it.

People talk fundamentals and superlatives and then make some changes of detail.

The rule of joy and the law of duty seem to me all one.

To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old.

To be seventy years young is sometimes for more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.

To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.

We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.

Young man, the secret of my success is that an early age I discovered that I was not God.

Life is action and passion; therefore, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of the time, at peril of being judged not to have lived.

Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our fathers have done them or our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a larger part than what we suspect of what we think.

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

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.

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

The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.

A man is usually more careful of his money than of his principles.

A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.

The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.

Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it.

Beware how you take away hope from any human being.

I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy.

Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.

Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.