A biography for Oliver Wendell Holmeshasn’t been written yet.
“A mind stretched by a new ideanever shrinks back to its original proportions. ~”
“Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way - and the fools know it.”
“Men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government.”
“I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions - adding that no general proposition is worth a damn.”
“A new and valid idea is worth more than a regiment and fewer men can furnish the former than command the latter.”
“Young man, the secret of my success is that at early age I discovered that I was not God.”
“Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future.”
“Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up.”
“Don't be 'consistent', but be simply true.”
“The language of judicial decision is mainly the language of logic. And the logical method and form flatter that longing for certainty and for repose which is in every human mind. But certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.”
“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.”
“Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.”
“A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.”
“Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.”
“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.”
“Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us.”
“Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.”
“Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.”
“But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.”
“A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.”