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I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions - adding that no general proposition is worth a damn.
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.
Worth
Proposition
Hate
Complacency
Science
Adding
Facts
Propositions
Ends
Chief
Form
Chiefs
Always
Damn
Men
General
More quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Even a dog knows the difference between being kicked and being stumbled over.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
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.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
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.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Learn the sweet magic of a cheerful face.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
What a blessed thing it is, that Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left!
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
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...
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn't give you a fig. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity, for that I would give you anything I have.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
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.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
The sea drowns out humanity and time. It has no sympathy with either, for it belongs to eternity and of that it sings its monotonous song forever and ever.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine shades! Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids! O, might I vole to some umbrageous clump,-- Depart,--be off,--excede,--evade,--erump!
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
I firmly believe that if the whole material medica, as now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be better for mankind-and all the worse for the fishes.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse. One comfort we have - Cincinnati sounds worse.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
We call those poets who are first to mark, Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn, Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark, While others only note that day is gone.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist two to one, he is a pedant.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
