Quote

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.
Science
Adding
Facts
Propositions
Ends
Chief
Form
Chiefs
Always
Damn
Men
General
Worth
Proposition
Hate
Complacency

More quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

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Speak clearly, if you speak at all carve every word before you let it fall.
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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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Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth.
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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!
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Even a dog knows the difference between being kicked and being stumbled over.
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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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I like children I like 'em, and I respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by them.
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Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
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The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.
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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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To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad.
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Don't flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.
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Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
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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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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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What we most want to ask of our Maker is an unfolding of the divine purpose in putting human beings into conditions in which such numbers of them would be sure to go wrong.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
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I would never use a long word, even, where a short one would answer the purpose.
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It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.
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A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day.
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Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.