223 Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

To be civilized is to be potentially master of all possible ideas, and that means that one has got beyond being shocked, although one preserves one's own moral aesthetic preferences.

The worst of a modern stylish mansion is that it has no place for ghosts.

Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.

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.

Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.

There is in all men a demand for the superlative, so much so that the poor devil that has no other way of reaching it attains it by getting drunk.

It is very lonely sometimes, trying to play God.

Most people have died before they expire; died to all earthly longings, so that the last breath is only, as it were, the locking of the door of the already deserted mansion.

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.