Quote

Memory is a net: one that finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook, but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

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Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Age: 85 †
Born: 1809
Born: August 29
Died: 1894
Died: October 7
Medical Writer
Novelist
Physician
Physician Writer
Poet
University Teacher
Cambridge
Massachusetts
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Sr.
Miles
Memory
Brook
Memories
Sticking
Takes
Brooks
Full
Dozen
Water
Finds
Running
Fish
Without
Fishes

More quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

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The mind of a bigot to the pupil of the eye the more light you pour on it, the more it contracts.
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Don't be 'consistent,' but be simply true.
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A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.
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Yes, child of suffering, thou may'st well be sure He who ordained the Sabbath loves the poor!
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It is a good plan to have a book with you in all places and at all times. If you are presently without, hurry without delay to the nearest shop and buy one of mine.
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We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were early implanted in his imagination no matter how utterly his reason may reject them...
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Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.
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America is the only place where man is full-grown!
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Seventeen hundred and fifty-five. Georgius Secundus was then alive,-- Snuffy old drone from the German hive.
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No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.
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Simple people... are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them.
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The truth is that the whole system of beliefs which comes in with the story of the fall of man ... is gently falling out of enlightened human intelligence.
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Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that - one stitch at a time taken patiently and the pattern will come out all right like the embroidery.
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Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer.
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The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce.
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What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred?
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I would never use a long word, even, where a short one would answer the purpose.
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The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library,'The medicines of the soul.
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Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself stupidity often saves a man from going mad.
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People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be 'consistent'.
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