Oliver Wendell Holmes

“It is very lonely sometimes, trying to play God.”

“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.”

“Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant.”

“The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.”

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

“When in doubt, do it.”

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

“Don't flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.”

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

“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.”

“Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force.”

“The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.”

“A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.”

“We do not quit playing because we grow old, we grow old because we quit playing.”

“The mind of a bigot to the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it contracts.”

“A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day.”

“The man who is always worrying about whether or not his soul would be damned generally has a soul that isn't worth a damn.”

“Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel of the Resurrection.”

“Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.”

“The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.”