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)

    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. (1809–1894)

    Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
    Long has it waved on high,
    And many an eye has danced to see
    That banner in the sky;
    Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    “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 (1803–1882)

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