Famous quotes containing the words oliver wendell holmes, wendell holmes, oliver wendell, oliver, wendell and/or holmes:
“Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye,
I watched that wretched man,
And since, I never dare to write
As funny as I can.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still as the spiral grew,
He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“How many people live on the reputation of the reputation they might have made!”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“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)
“All the great speakers were bad speakers at first. Stumping it through England for seven years made Cobden a consummate debater. Stumping it through New England for twice seven trained Wendell Phillips.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
““No, no; the real name,” said Holmes sweetly. “It is always awkward doing business with an alias.””
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)