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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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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.
Place
Capital
Adjusted
Littles
Cells
Condemned
Punishment
Earthly
Little
Crime
Dwelling
Made
Comfortable
Bare
Life
Existence
Confined
Though
Cell
Tolerably
Living
Narrow
Sentenced

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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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The individual will always be a minority. If a man is in a minority of one, we lock him up.
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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 life of the law has not been logic it has been experience.
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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 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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The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
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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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We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to.
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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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It is perfectly easy to be original by violating the laws of decency and the canons of good taste.
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Our test of truth is a reference to either a present or imagined future majority in favour of our view.
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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 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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Every calling is great when greatly pursued.
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The very minute a thought is threatened with publicity it seems to shrink towards mediocrity.
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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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My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins.
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To rest upon a formula is a slumber that, prolonged, means death.
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