Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

    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)

    The parson was working his Sunday’s text,—
    Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed
    At what the—Moses—was coming next.
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    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)

    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)

    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)

    “No, no; the real name,” said Holmes sweetly. “It is always awkward doing business with an alias.”
    Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)