Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

    “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)

    “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)

    “Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
    Georgius Secundus was then alive,—
    Snuffy old drone from the German hive.”
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    “The King [Charles II] after the Restoration accused the poet, Edmund Waller, of having made finer verses in praise of Oliver Cromwell than of himself; to which he agreed, saying, that Fiction was the soul of Poetry.”
    —Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)

    “Speak clearly, if you speak at all;
    Carve every word before you let it fall.”
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)