Oliver Wendell Holmes

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Biography of Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Quote	Categories	Rating	Rate
"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
"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
"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
"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
"This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice."	Justice
"The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics."	Justice
"Our morality seems to be only a check on the ultimate domination of force, just as our politeness is a check on the impulse of every pig to put his feet in the trough."	Morality
"Science is the topography of ignorance."	Science
"Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues."	Virtue
"To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man."	Miscellaneous
"One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions."	Ideas
"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
"Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them!"	Music
"I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization."	God, Taxes
"Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing."	Age
"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
"Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend."	Friendship
"Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them."	Friendship
"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
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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