The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort. Oliver Wendell Holmes More Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes More Quotes From Oliver Wendell Holmes What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. Oliver Wendell Holmes A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. Oliver Wendell Holmes It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen. Oliver Wendell Holmes Our test of truth is a reference to either a present or imagined future majority in favour of our view. Oliver Wendell Holmes To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad. Oliver Wendell Holmes 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. Oliver Wendell Holmes A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time. Oliver Wendell Holmes A person's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions. Oliver Wendell Holmes A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in colour and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used. Oliver Wendell Holmes Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours. Oliver Wendell Holmes Beat a man with the strength of your argument, not with the strength of your arm. Oliver Wendell Holmes Between two groups of men that want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds I see no remedy except force... It seems to me that every society rests on the death of men. Oliver Wendell Holmes Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite. Oliver Wendell Holmes Consciously or unconsciously we all strive to make the kind of a world we like. Oliver Wendell Holmes Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies they are ready enough to tell them. Oliver Wendell Holmes Every calling is great when greatly pursued. Oliver Wendell Holmes I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving -- we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it -- but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor. Oliver Wendell Holmes 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. Oliver Wendell Holmes If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate. Oliver Wendell Holmes Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtaxed. Oliver Wendell Holmes
