266 Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Cupid “the little greatest enemy.”

Don’t flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.

The world’s great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.

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.

Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse. One comfort we have – Cincinnati sounds worse.

Why can’t somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says, and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks?

Trouble makes us one with every human being in the world – and unless we touch others, we’re out of touch with life.

The man who is always worrying about whether or not his soul would be damned generally has a soul that isn’t worth a damn.

Nothing is more common than the wish to be remarkable