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Our morality seems to be only a check on the ultimate domination of force, just as our politeness is a check on the impulse of every pig to put his feet in the trough.
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.
Force
Domination
Seems
Pigs
Every
Check
Checks
Impulse
Morality
Ultimate
Trough
Feet
Politeness
More quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhaps a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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.
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For him in vain the envious seasons roll Who bears eternal summer in his soul.
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You hear that boy laughing?you think he's all fun But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done The children laugh loud as they troop to his call, And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all.
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Most people have died before they expire died to all earthly longings, so that the last breath is only, as it were, the locking of the door of the already deserted mansion.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
A good soldier, like a good horse, cannot be of a bad color.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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.
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Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith.
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Longevity is having a chronic disease - and taking care of it.
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Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.
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This is a court of law, not a court of justice.
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Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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.
For my part I think it is a less evil that some criminals should escape, than that the government should play an ignoble part.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
In order to know whether a human being is young or old, offer it food of different kinds at short intervals. If young, it will eat anything at any hour of the day or night.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
One of the eternal conflicts out of which life is made up is that between the effort of every man to get the most he can for his services, and that of society, disguised under the name of capital, to get his services for the least possible return.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
[The Constitution] is an experiment as all life is an experiment.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
