Famous quotes containing the words oliver wendell holmes, wendell holmes, oliver wendell, oliver and/or wendell:
“And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (18091894)
“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. (18091894)
“Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus was then alive,
Snuffy old drone from the German hive.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (18091894)
“A man, said Oliver Cromwell, never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going. Dreams and drunkenness, the use of opium and alcohol are the semblance and counterfeit of this oracular genius, and hence their dangerous attraction for men. For the like reason they ask the aid of wild passions, as in gaming and war, to ape in some manner these flames and generosities of the heart.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“Alas for those two loving ones! she waked not from her swound,
And he was taken with the cramp, and in the waves was drowned;
But Fate has metamorphosed them, in pity of their woe,
And now they keep an oyster-shop for mermaids down below.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (18091894)