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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.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Age: 93 †
Born: 1841
Born: March 8
Died: 1935
Died: March 6
Judge
Jurist
Lawyer
Philosopher
Politician
University Teacher
Boston
Massachusetts
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Oliver W. Holmes
Jr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr
Holmes
Oliver Wendell
Jr.
Oliver Wendell
Jr. Holmes
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Jr
Oliver Holmes
Jr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
jr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Jr.
Living
Transparent
Thought
Skin
Used
According
May
Skins
Unchanged
Time
Content
Crystal
Life
Circumstances
Crystals
Color
Vary
Word
Greatly

More quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

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Taxes are what we pay for civilized society
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before they always did, they always will and if you don't make it of wood, you must make it of words.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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Every man is an omnibus in which his ancestors ride.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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It is perfectly easy to be original by violating the laws of decency and the canons of good taste.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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To an imagination of any scope the most far reaching form of power is not money, it is the command of ideas
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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Old age is like an opium dream. Nothing seems real except the unreal.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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Modesty and reverence are no less virtues of freemen than the democratic feeling which will submit neither to arrogance nor to servility.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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There is no friend like the old friend, who has shared our morning days, No greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise: Fame is the scentless sunflower, with gaudy crown of gold But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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To brag little, to lose well, / To crow gently if in luck, / To pay up, to own up, / To shut up if beaten, / Are the virtues of a sportingman.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power. The prize of the general is not a bigger tent, but command.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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The great end of being is to harmonize man with the order of things, and the church has been a good pitch-pipe, and may be so still.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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The joy of life is to put out one's power in some natural and useful or harmless way. There is no other. And the real misery is not to do this.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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To be master of any branch of knowledge, you must master those which lie next to it, and thus to know anything you must know all.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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To be civilized is to be potentially master of all possible ideas, and that means that one has got beyond being shocked, although one preserves one's own moral aesthetic preferences.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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We are all sentenced to capital punishment for the crime of living, and though the condemned cell of our earthly existence is but a narrow and bare dwelling-place, we have adjusted ourselves to it, and made it tolerably comfortable for the little while we are to be confined in it.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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You make me chuckle when you say that you are no longer young, that you have turned twenty-four. A man is or may be young to after sixty, and not old before eighty.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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The root of joy, as of duty, is to put all one's powers towards some great end.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.