Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

    Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
    As the swift seasons roll!
    Leave thy low-vaulted past!
    Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
    Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
    Till thou at length art free,
    Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!
    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)

    O, better that her shattered hulk
    Should sink beneath the wave;
    Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
    And there should be her grave;
    Nail to the mast her holy flag,
    Set every threadbare sail,
    And give her to the god of storms,
    The lightning and the gale!
    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)

    Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)