Oliver Wendell Holmes

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)

    Why can’t somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says, and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks.
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    The advice of their elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.
    Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935)

    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)

    And silence, like a poultice, comes
    To heal the blows of sound.
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)