Famous quotes containing the words oliver wendell holmes, wendell holmes, oliver wendell, oliver and/or wendell:
“Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide—that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life—are alike forbidden.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“Little-minded people’s thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes’ conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“People who make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered witticism.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“I have this very moment finished reading a novel called The Vicar of Wakefield [by Oliver Goldsmith].... It appears to me, to be impossible any person could read this book through with a dry eye and yet, I don’t much like it.... There is but very little story, the plot is thin, the incidents very rare, the sentiments uncommon, the vicar is contented, humble, pious, virtuous—but upon the whole the book has not at all satisfied my expectations.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)
“Little of all we value here
Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year
Without both feeling and looking queer.
In fact, there’s nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)