266 Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes

To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.

A man of very moderate ability may be a good physician, if he devotes himself faithfully to the work.

It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes life worth looking at.

A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.

Apologizing a very desperate habit one that is rarely cured.

Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don you love a cushioned seat in a corner, by the fireside, with your slippers on your feet?

Age, like distance, lends a double charm.

To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it — but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.

You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them.