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Young feller, you will never appreciate the potentialities of the English language until you have heard a Southern mule driver search the soul of a mule.

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.
Appreciate
Mule
Heard
Potentialities
Language
Mules
War
Driver
Young
Drivers
Soul
Southern
Never
Search
English
Feller

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Young man, the secret of my success is that an early age I discovered that I was not God.
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The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.
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The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.
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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.
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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.
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The root of joy, as of duty, is to put all one's powers towards some great end.
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There is one gratification an old author can afford a certain class of critics that namely, of comparing him as he is with what he was. It is a pleasure to mediocrity to have its superiors brought within range.
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A new and valid idea is worth more than a regiment and fewer men can furnish the former than command the latter.
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Taxes are what we pay for civilized society
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Research and writing are lonely occupations. It is easy to become discouraged in solitary confinement.
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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.
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Where we stand is not as important as the direction in which we are moving.
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My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins.
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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.
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The individual will always be a minority. If a man is in a minority of one, we lock him up.
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Science is the topography of ignorance. From a few elevated points we triangulate vast spaces, inclosing infinite unknown details. We cast the lead, and draw up a little sand from abysses we may never reach with our dredges.
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No generalization is wholly true—not even this one.
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The thing I want to do is put as many new ideas into the law as I can, to show how particular solutions involve general theory, and to do it with style. I should like to be admitted to be the greatest jurist in the world.
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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.
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The man of action has the present, but the thinker controls the future.
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