Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end.


Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

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Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
One flag, one land, one heart, one hand, One Nation evermore! - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.,
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.
It is the province of knowledge to speak And it is the privilege of wisdom to listen. -Oliver Wende...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions. ~Oliver Wendal...
K. LANGSTON
The most important thing that I've figured out is that things work out the way they're suppo...
RANDY COUTURE
Prayer is the most important thing that I do.
WAYNE HUIZENGA
When you are on assignment, film is the least expensive thing in a very practical sense. Your time, ...
ANNIE LEIBOVITZ
My family is the most important thing to me.
KIMORA LEE SIMMONS
Family is the most important thing in the world.
PRINCESS DIANA
The most important thing is to stay positive.
SAKU KOIVU
The most important thing to do is really listen.
ITZHAK PERLMAN
The most important thing is story-telling. It's as singular and old-fashioned as that.
DAVID SOUL
When I approach a story or movie, the story is the most important thing.
ALEXANDRE AJA
The room is the most important thing about recording.
ADRIAN SMITH
The most important thing to me is that it's all really raw.
BEBE REXHA
Facts are generally overesteemed. For most practical purposes, a thing is what men think it is. When...
JOHN UPDIKE
The most important thing is to not waste your money.
GARETH BALE
The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said.
PETER DRUCKER
The most important thing in the world is family and love.
JOHN WOODEN
For all practical purposes participating in it.
ALAN GRAYSON
I'll be truthful. The weekly paycheck is the most important thing to me.
BELA LUGOSI
Next to courage, willpower is the most important thing in politics.
PAUL JOHNSON
The most important thing for me as an artist is having an identity.
ERIC CHURCH
Well, a lead is the most important thing about the story.
KURT LODER
Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the righ...
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER
Yeah, I'm a thrill seeker, but crikey, education's the most important thing.
STEVE IRWIN
The most important thing as a leader is your relationship with God.
MANNY PACQUIAO
The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible.
T. S. ELIOT
It's nice to look good, but the most important thing is to be you.
NANA MOUSKOURI
The most important thing when ill is to never lose heart.
VLADIMIR LENIN
Learning is the most important thing, no mater how you do it, or where you do it, or who you do it w...
SAOIRSE RONAN
People in their 70s can still have incredible lives. Health is the most important thing.
CALVIN KLEIN
The spectacle takes us away from our routines. For at least a time, we feel part of something big, c...
NEL NODDINGS
My whole career, my swing has always been the most important thing to me. Even when I'm taking a...
DAVID ORTIZ
Politics and government are certainly among the most important of practical human interests.
P. T. BARNUM
It's one of the most important things at the end of the day, being able to say no to an investme...
HENRY KRAVIS
I always had the theory that the most important thing is be happy, enjoy what are you doing, and be ...
RAFAEL NADAL
The most important thing about Spaceship Earth - an instruction book didn't come with it.
R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER
The most important thing about power is to make sure you don't have to use it.
EDWIN LAND
I think that casting is probably the most important thing in television production.
DAN HARMON
The most important thing is winning, not breaking the world record.
CESAR CIELO
What's the most important thing in the world? It's love, and I look at that as an energy, no...
EDDIE ALBERT
To be a great motorbike racer, the most important thing is passion for the bike.
VALENTINO ROSSI
If you talk to any pitcher, consistency is the most important thing.
JAMIE MOYER
I've got a theory that if you give 100% all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end...
LARRY BIRD
When you come out of the storms and sub-zero temperatures into a tiny yurt, there's a sense that...
TIM COPE
Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in th...
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The most important thing is to get better at your craft, and concussions and head impacts are a setb...
ABBY WAMBACH
The MVP award was very satisfying in terms of personal accomplishments, but the championship was the...
BOB COUSY
There's an idealization of being an entrepreneur, but the most important thing is to have a real...
DUSTIN MOSKOVITZ
Rounding to the nearest cent is sufficiently accurate for practical purposes.
ALEXANDER JOHN ELLIS
I think the most important thing for me in a relationship is honesty.
ZAC EFRON
The most important thing in the face is the eyes, and if you can make the eyes talk, you're half...
IAN HOLM
The most important thing is to enjoy yourself and have a good time.
C. Z. GUEST
The thing that I want to do, the most important thing to me is winning. How we do it, I really don&#...
MIKE SINGLETARY
The most important thing is you should not be split or fighting each other.
BHUMIBOL ADULYADEJ
The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they wan...
KOBE BRYANT
The bikini is the most important thing since the atom bomb.
DIANA VREELAND
The most important thing for me is to have real friendship between Egyptians and Americans.
MOHAMMED MORSI
The most important thing in the kitchen is the waste paper basket and it needs to be centrally locat...
DONALD KNUTH
I am a private guy, and at the end of the day, I only really do care about my family. That's the...
BROCK LESNAR
The most important thing is to stay the course - not to get shaken out of the market during a diffic...
JOHN W. ROGERS, JR.
Though teenagers are generally very interested in sports, they must realise that education is the mo...
KAPIL DEV
The most important thing is God's blessing and if you believe in God and you believe in yourself...
MOHAMED AL-FAYED
It's doesn't just come overnight, you've got to train for it and believe in yourself; th...
MO FARAH
The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must ...
JOHN STEINBECK
Art must be parochial in the beginning to be cosmopolitan in the end.
GEORGE A. MOORE
People say the most important thing is building a world-class team.
BEN HOROWITZ
The most important thing for staying in shape is having fun with your workouts.
ERIN HEATHERTON
The most important thing when you do a movie is that you find an audience that really understands wh...
ALEXANDRE AJA
The most important thing about my life is this integrity, and you can't lie to yourself.
CHRISTOPHER GUEST
Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths.
ETTY HILLESUM
The most important thing is posture: when you get old, it's the way you walk, the way you stand,...
CARINE ROITFELD
The most important thing for me as an actor playing a character is to make you laugh. That's my ...
ERIC STONESTREET
For all practical purposes, the Washington case is going to resolve the matter.
KARL QUACKENBUSH
In the end it doesn't matter what you do.
HARRISON BIRTWISTLE
In the end, crime doesn't pay.
LANE GARRISON
The ultimate creative capacity of the brain may be, for all practical purposes, infinite.
GEORGE LEONARD
The ultimate creative capacity of the brain may be, for all practical purposes, infinite.
GEORGE B. LEONARD
Real Madrid is the most important thing that happened to me, both as a footballer and as a person.
ZINEDINE ZIDANE
I always work with a goal - and the goal is to improve as a player and a person. That, finally, is t...
RAFAEL NADAL
The most important thing in life is, if you have a dream, I mean a real good dream, follow it.
EVEL KNIEVEL
The most important thing is to enjoy your life - to be happy - it's all that matters.
AUDREY HEPBURN
When people ask me what the most important thing is in life, I answer: 'Just breathe.'
YOKO ONO
If you have kids, it is the most important thing to create good times.
TOM CRUISE
I think the most important thing about music is the sense of escape.
THOM YORKE
The majority of the research I do is archaeological research, but to me, as a professor, the most im...
SARAH PARCAK
Sports betting is all about money management, so the most money won on one event is not the most imp...
BRUCE DERN
The most important thing to say is that Sinn Fein isn't going back to anything. We are a party o...
MARTIN MCGUINNESS
The most important thing for a good marriage is to learn how to argue peaceably.
ANITA EKBERG
Money isn't the most important thing in life, but it's reasonably close to oxygen on the ...
ZIG ZIGLAR
Just to get the basic fundamentals and empathy - I think that's the most important thing to brin...
SCOTT MECHLOWICZ
I realized that health is the most important thing and that all the other things come with time if y...
BLANKA VLASIC
I think the most important thing about coaching is that you have to have a sense of confidence about...
PHIL JACKSON
The most important job I'll ever have is spelled D-A-D.
MIKE PENCE
In the end, I need to be fulfilled in my work - that's more important than the money.
T. R. KNIGHT
Lingerie is one of the most important pieces of your wardrobe. You can have a wardrobe malfunction i...
ADRIANA LIMA
In the end, it's a mental maturity to let your best come out.
LINDSEY VONN
For all practical intents and purposes, everyone is now a filmmaker.
IRA DEUTCHMAN
[While French and Vietnamese styles are often found combined in restaurant settings around the world...
MAI PHAM

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This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice.
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Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.
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The rule of joy and the law of duty seem to me all one.
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I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions -- adding that no ge...
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Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our father's have done them or our ne...
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I confess that altruistic and cynically selfish talk seem to me about equally unreal. With all humil...
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Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect...
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For, stripped of the temporary associations which gave rise to it, it is now the moment when by comm...
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Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
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You make me chuckle when you say that you are no longer young, that you have turned twenty-four. A m...
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If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any o...
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The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best book...
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A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.
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To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old.
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The great act of faith is when a man decides he is not God.
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To know is not less than to feel.
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The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.
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A page of history is worth a pound of logic.
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A new and valid idea is worth more than a regiment and fewer men can furnish the former than command...
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Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
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People talk fundamentals and superlatives and then make some changes of detail.
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The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in which direction we are moving.
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If a man hasn't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has the worse for his patient.
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I despise making the most of one's time. Half of the pleasures of life consist of the opportunities ...
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Nothing is so frequent as to mistake an ordinary human gift for a special and extraordinary endowmen...
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A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimension.
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It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to...
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To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad.
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Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.
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The ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas [and] the best test of truth is t...
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I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are movi...
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It is the province of knowledge to speak
And it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
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I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passio...
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We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.
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We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, b...
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To live is to function. That is all there is in living.
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The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will c...
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Our test of truth is a reference to either a present or imagined future majority in favour of our vi...
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Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.
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A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary...
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A moment's insight is sometimes worth a lifetime's experience.
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Carve every word before you let it fall.
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When I want to understand what is happening today or try to decide what will happen tomorrow, I look...
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The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.
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A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary...
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What I wouldn't give to be seventy again!
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Life is action and passion; therefore it is required of a man that he should share the passion and a...
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Don't be 'consistent,' but be simply true.
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The man of action has the present, but the thinker controls the future.
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Even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked.
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The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will c...
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It seems to me that at this time we need education in the obvious more than the investigation of the...
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Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul w...
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A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.
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Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
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Beware how you take away hope from any human being.
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Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.
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Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
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Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
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Men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government.
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A man is usually more careful of his money than of his principles.
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Life is action and passion; therefore, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and ...
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You commit a sin of omission if you do not utilize all the power that is within you. All men have cl...
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On the whole, I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirms the worth of life as an end in itself...
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The riders in a race do not stop when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before...
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Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR.
Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR.
Beware how you take away hope from any human being.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR.
I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR.
Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul w...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR.
For I say unto you in all sadness of conviction that to think great thoughts you must be heroes as w...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR.
You make me chuckle when you say that you are no longer young, that you have turned twenty-four. A m...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR.
Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.
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There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome,...
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This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice.
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To be civilized is to be potentially master of all possible ideas, and that means that one has got b...
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Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us t...
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The rules of evidence in the main are based on experience, logic, and common sense, less hampered by...
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I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.
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Life is a romantic business. It is painting a picture, not doing a sumbut you have to make the roman...
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Great constitutional provisions must be administered with caution. Some play must be allowed for the...
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It cannot be helped, it is as it should be, that the law is behind the times.
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It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time...
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When twenty years ago a vague terror went over the earth and the word socialism began to be heard, I...
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Nature has but one judgment on wrong conductif you can call that a judgment which seemingly has no r...
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I do not think the United States would come to an end if we lost our power to declare an Act of Cong...
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It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to...
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But the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. The most stringen...
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I always say, as you know, that if my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them. Its my jo...
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I confess that I do not understand the principle on which the power to fix a minimum for the wages o...
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Gentlemen, to the lady without whom I should never have survived for eighty, nor sixty, nor yet thir...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even m...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
The power to tax is not the power to destroy while this Court sits.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
A question like the present should be disposed of without undue delay. But a State cannot be expecte...
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A river is more than an amenity, it is a treasure.
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The general rule, at least, is that while property may be regulated to a certain extent, if regulati...
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Speak not too well of one who scarce will knowHimself transfigured in its roseate glow;Say kindly of...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Every living sentence which shows a mind at work for itself is to be welcomed. It is not the first u...
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The riders in a race do not stop short when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter ...
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O Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q. !Strange is the gift that I owe to you;Such a gift as never a kingSave ...
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I should like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a gorilla that some good and even prett...
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There is no time like the old time, when you and I were young,
When the buds of April blossomed, ...
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Old books, you know well, are books of the world's youth, and new books are the fruits of its age.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
The most foolish kind of a book is a kind of leaky boat on the sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom wil...
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The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as ...
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We must have a weak spot or two in our character before we can love it much.
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A new untruth is better than an old truth.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light.
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Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at the touch, nay, you may kick it about all day l...
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Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.
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To live is to function. That is all there is in living.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
It is faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth looking at.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
On the whole, I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirms the worth of life as an end in itself...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Love is the master key which opens the gates of happiness.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Every calling is great when greatly pursued.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not dri...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
A few can touch the magic string, and noisy fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that never sin...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
The older author is constantly rediscovering himself in the more or less fossilized productions of h...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Men are idolaters and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; t...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimension.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it will co...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
You commit a sin of omission if you do not utilize all the power that is within you. All men have cl...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
A good soldier, like a good horse, cannot be of a bad color.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense o...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
I firmly believe that if the whole material medical could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul w...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Our brains our seventy year clocks, the angel of life winds them up once and for all, then closes th...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
People talk fundamentals and superlatives and then make some changes of detail.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Simple people... are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
What a comfort a dull but kindly person is, to be sure, at times! A ground-glass shade over a gas-la...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
This is a court of law young man, not a court of justice.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide --that is, violent treatment of a word wi...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Knowledge like timber shouldn't be mush use till they are seasoned.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
This is an inquisitive age, and if we insist on piling up beyond a certain height knowledge which is...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Good Americans when they die, go to Paris.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best book...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Several years before birth, advertise for a couple of parents belonging to long-lived families.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Youth fades; love droops, the leaves of friendship fall;
A mother's secret hope outlives them al...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
As life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action o...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Beauty is the index of a larger fact than wisdom.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
... the hydrostatic paradox of controversy. Don't you know what that means? Well, I will tell you. Y...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if it has common sense on the ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
And when you stick on conversation's burrs, don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Little-minded people's thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes conversation gives you ...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Man's mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
A new and valid idea is worth more than a regiment and fewer men can furnish the former than command...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to i...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
There never was an idea started that woke up men out of their stupid indifference but its originator...
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
What I call a good patient is one who, having found a good physician, sticks to him till he dies.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
The freeman, casting with unpurchased hand the vote that shakes the turrets of the land.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES