266 Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding.

The sea drowns out humanity and time. It has no sympathy with either, for it belongs to eternity; and of that it sings its monotonous song forever and ever.

Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.

We call those poets who are first to mark, Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn, Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark, While others only note that day is gone.

A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.

What we most want to ask of our Maker is an unfolding of the divine purpose in putting human beings into conditions in which such numbers of them would be sure to go wrong.

Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light.

Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.

Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, and to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make an ideal.