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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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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.
Character
Beaten
Littles
Virtues
Little
Shut
Wells
Luck
Well
Pay
Lose
Brag
Loses
Crow
Virtue
Gently

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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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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.
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Longevity is having a chronic disease - and taking care of it.
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A good soldier, like a good horse, cannot be of a bad color.
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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.
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It's a good thing to be rich and a good thing to be strong, but it is a better thing to be beloved of many friends.
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A river is more than an amenity, it is a treasure.
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Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.
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Where we stand is not as important as the direction in which we are moving.
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For my part I think it is a less evil that some criminals should escape, than that the government should play an ignoble part.
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History has to be rewritten because history is the selection of those threads of causes or antecedents that we are interested in.
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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.
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[The Constitution] is an experiment as all life is an experiment.
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The language of judicial decision is mainly the language of logic. And the logical method and form flatter that longing for certainty and for repose which is in every human mind. But certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.
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It seems to me that at this time we need education in the obvious more than investigation of the obscure.
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The common law is not a brooding omnipresence in the sky, but the articulate voice of some sovereign or quasi sovereign that can be identified although some decisions with which I have disagreed seem to me to have forgotten the fact.
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Even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked.
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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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Men, like peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before they begin to decay.
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Under bad manners, as under graver faults, lies very commonly an overestimate of our special individuality, as distinguished from our generic humanity.
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