197 Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

There was never an idea started that woke up men out of their stupid indifference but its originator was spoken of as a crank.

There is nothing like the dead cold hand of the past to take down our tumid egotism and lead us into the solemn flow of the life of our race.

In order to know whether a human being is young or old, offer it food of different kinds at short intervals. If young, it will eat anything at any hour of the day or night.

The ideas of the classics, so far as living, are our commonplaces. It is the modern books that give us the latest and most profound conceptions. It seems to me rather a lazy makeshift to mumble over the familiar.

There is one gratification an old author can afford a certain class of critics; that namely, of comparing him as he is with what he was. It is a pleasure to mediocrity to have its superiors brought within range.

To us who remain behind is left this day of memories. Every year – in the full tide of spring, at the height of the symphony of flowers and love and life – there comes a pause, and through the silence we hear the lonely pipe of death.

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

We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.

Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our fathers have done them or our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a larger part than what we suspect of what we think.