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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.

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.
Humanity
Commonly
Lying
Courtesy
Distinguished
Individuality
Manners
Faults
Graver
Lies
Overestimate
Special
Generic

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Poverty comes pleading not for charity, for the most part, but imploring us to find a purchaser for its unmarketable wares.
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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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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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Blood is a destiny. One's genius descends in the stream from long lines of ancestry.
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The worst of a modern stylish mansion is that it has no place for ghosts.
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There was never an idea started that woke up men out of their stupid indifference but its originator was spoken of as a crank.
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To an imagination of any scope the most far reaching form of power is not money, it is the command of ideas
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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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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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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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If you can eat sawdust without butter, you can be a success in the law.
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For him in vain the envious seasons roll Who bears eternal summer in his soul.
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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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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.
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Fame is the scentless sunflower, with gaudy crown of gold But friendship is the rose, with sweets in every fold.
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Where we stand is not as important as the direction in which we are moving.
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Research and writing are lonely occupations. It is easy to become discouraged in solitary confinement.
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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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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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