Quote

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.

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.
Littles
Details
Points
May
Draws
Unknown
Little
Reach
Cast
Abysses
Never
Infinite
Vast
Topography
Ignorance
Casts
Elevated
Lead
Draw
Spaces
Space
Ignorant
Abyss
Science
Accounts
Sand

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Men, like peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before they begin to decay.
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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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To rest upon a formula is a slumber that, prolonged, means death.
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A new and valid idea is worth more than a regiment and fewer men can furnish the former than command the latter.
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Longevity is having a chronic disease - and taking care of it.
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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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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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Free competition is worth more to society than it costs.
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Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned.
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You make me chuckle when you say that you are no longer young, that you have turned twenty-four. A man is or may be young to after sixty, and not old before eighty.
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The man of action has the present, but the thinker controls the future.
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Apologizing - a very desperate habit - one that is rarely cured. Apology is only egotism wrong side out.
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[The Constitution] is an experiment as all life is an experiment.
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Young feller, you will never appreciate the potentialities of the English language until you have heard a Southern mule driver search the soul of a mule.
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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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A good soldier, like a good horse, cannot be of a bad color.
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General propositions do not decide concrete cases. The decision will depend on a judgment or intuition more subtle than any articulate major premise.
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Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before they always did, they always will and if you don't make it of wood, you must make it of words.
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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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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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