Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

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

“Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else - very rarely to those who say to themselves, 'Go to, now, let us be a celebrated individual!'.”

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

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

“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.”

“The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort.”

“Memory is a net: one finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook, but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking.”

“Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light.”

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

“Every calling is great when greatly pursued.”

“People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be 'consistent'.”

“I despise making the most of one's time. Half of the pleasures of life consist of the opportunities one has neglected.”

“Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.”

“Every idea is an incitement... eloquence may set fire to reason.”

“I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy - I don't disparage envy, but I don't accept it as legitimately my master.”

“It seems to me that at this time we need education in the obvious more than investigation of the obscure.”

“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?”

“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 greatest act of faith is when a man understands he is not God.”