Oliver Wendell Holmes

I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.

Men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government.

The very aim and end of our institutions is just this that we may think what we like and say what we think.

Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.

Love prefers twilight to daylight.

A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend.

The very aim and end of our institutions is just this that we may thing what we like and say what we think.

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

The very minute a thought is threatened with publicity it seems to shrink towards mediocrity

Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.

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

A new untruth is better than an old truth.

For him in vain the envious seasons roll, Who bears eternal summer in his soul.

The riders in a race do not stop when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill. There is time to hear the kind voices of friends and say to oneself, The work is done.

Carve every word before you let it fall.

The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men - from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms.

The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.

The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.

The chief end of a man is to frame general ideas - and... no general idea is worth a damn.

On the whole, I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirms the worth of life as an end in itself, as against the saints who deny it.

It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.

A good and true woman is said to resemble a Cremona fiddle age but increases its worth and sweetens its tone

It is faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth looking at.

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.

It seems to me that at this time we need education in the obvious more than the investigation of the obscure.