Oliver Wendell Holmes

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Biography of Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Quote	Categories	Rating	Rate
"Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris."	America
"It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return."	Government
"It cannot be helped, it is as it should be, that the law is behind the times."	Success, Law
"It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV."	Success, Law
"Life is a romantic business. It is painting a picture, not doing a sum-but you have to make the romance, and it will come to the question how much fire you have in your belly."	Success, Life
"O Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.!Strange is the gift that I owe to you;Such a gift as never a kingSave to daughter or son might bring,-All my tenure of heart and hand,All my title to house and land;Mother and sister and child and wifeAnd joy and sorrow and death and life!"	Success, Life
"But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas-that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out."	God, Truth
"I confess that I do not understand the principle on which the power to fix a minimum for the wages of women can be denied by those who admit the power to fix a maximum for their hours of work. I fully assent to the proposition that here as elsewhere the distinctions of the law are distinctions of degree, but I perceive no difference in the kind or degree of interference with liberty, the only matter with which we have any concern, between the one case and the other. The bargain is equally affected whichever half you regulate.... It will need more than the Nineteenth Amendment to convince me that there are no differences between men and women, or that legislation cannot take those differences into account."	Women
"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."	Youth
"A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve."	Love
"A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve."	Friendship, Dreams
"If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it round. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't embrace trouble; that's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it."	Anti-Religion, Adversity
"Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing."	Age
"From forty to fifty a man must move upward, or the natural falling off in the vigor of life will carry him rapidly downward."	Age
"The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts."	Reading
"The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts."	Anti-God, Books
"Talking is like playing on the harp; there is as much in laying the hands on the strings to stop their vibration as in twanging them to bring out their music."	Quotations
"Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our fathers have done them or that our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a larger part than we suspect of what we think."	Love, Conformity
"The longer we live, the more we find we are like other persons."	Government, Equality
"Life, not the parson, teaches conduct."	Experience
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Browse Oliver Wendell Holmes quotes by category:

Adversity	Age	America
Anti-God	Anti-Religion	Books
Character	Conformity	Dreams
Equality	Experience	Facts
Friends	Friendship	God
Government	Health	Ideas
Justice	Knowledge	Law
Learning	Life	Love
Men	Miscellaneous	Morality
Music	Quotations	Reading
Science	Success	Taxes
Time	Truth	Virtue
Wisdom	Women	Youth