Quotations by Author

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Where we love is home/Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtaxed.

The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.

No stranger can get a great many notes of torture out of a human soul; it takes one that knows it well -- parent, child, brother, sister, intimate.

I don't generally feel anything until noon, then it's time for my nap.

It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.

Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness.

Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.

Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.

Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.

The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.

The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts but learning how to make facts live.

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.

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.

Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future.

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.

The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.

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.

Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.

We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. 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. Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss, or throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you don't make it of wood, you must make it of words.

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.

Take a music bath once or twice a week and for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water-bath is to the body.