Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

    “He sent for lancewood to make the thills;
    The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees;
    The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese,
    But lasts like iron for things like these;
    The hubs of logs from the “Settler’s ellum,”—
    Last of its timber,—they couldn’t sell ‘em,”
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

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

    “A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.”
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    “All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called “facts.” They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Who does not know fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact or two that they lead after them into decent company like so many bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at every ingenious suggestion, or convenient generalization, or pleasant fancy? I allow no “facts” at this table.”
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)