Oliver Wendell Holmes

Famous quotes containing the words oliver wendell holmes, wendell holmes, oliver wendell, oliver, wendell and/or holmes:

    Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye,
    I watched that wretched man,
    And since, I never dare to write
    As funny as I can.
    Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called “facts.” They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Who does not know fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact or two that they lead after them into decent company like so many bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at every ingenious suggestion, or convenient generalization, or pleasant fancy? I allow no “facts” at this table.
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.
    Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    When it’s over I don’t want to wonder
    if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
    I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
    or full of argument.
    I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
    —Mary Oliver (b. 1935)

    Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is glorious; but a weak flavor of genius in an essentially common person is detestable. It spoils the grand neutrality of a commonplace character, as the rinsings of an unwashed wine-glass spoil a draught of fair water.
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    “No, no; the real name,” said Holmes sweetly. “It is always awkward doing business with an alias.”
    Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)