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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.
Ultimate
Trough
Feet
Politeness
Force
Domination
Seems
Pigs
Every
Check
Checks
Impulse
Morality
More quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
I despise making the most of one's time. Half of the pleasures of life consist of the opportunities one has neglected.
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Certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.
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I know of no teachers so powerful and persuasive as the little army of specialists. They carry no banners, they beat no drums but where they are men learn that bustle and push are not the equals of quiet genius and serene mastery.
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Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.
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We must think things not words, or at least we must constantly translate our words into the facts for which they stand, if we are to keep to the real and the true.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Liberty is often a heavy burden on a man. It involves the necessity for perpetual choice which is the kind of labor men have always dreaded.
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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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Carve every word before you let it fall.
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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.
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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.
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It is very grand to die in harness, but it is very pleasant to have the tight straps unbuckled and the heavy collar lifted from the neck and shoulders.
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To us who remain behind is left this day of memories. Every year--in the full tide of spring, at the height of the symphony of flowers and love and life--there comes a pause, and through the silence we hear the lonely pipe of death.
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There is in all men a demand for the superlative, so much so that the poor devil that has no other way of reaching it attains it by getting drunk.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
This is a court of law, not a court of justice.
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Men are tattooed with their special beliefs like so many South Sea Islanders but a real human heart with divine love in it beats with the same glow under all the patterns of all earth's thousand tribes.
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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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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.
