| 43 Famous Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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“The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor
its great scholars great men.”
Students Quotes Source: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (VI)
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“Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame?
A fitful tongue of leaping flame;
A giddy whirlwind's fickle gust,
That lifts a pinch of mortal dust;
A few swift years, and who can show
Which dust was Bill, and which was Joe?”
Students Quotes Source: Poems of the Class of '29--Bill and Joe (st. 7)
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“Then there is that glorious Epicurean paradox, uttered by my
friend, the Historian in one of his flashing moments: "Give us
the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries."”
Paradoxes Quotes Source: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (VI)
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“Our Union is river, lake, ocean, and sky:
Man breaks not the medal, when God cuts the die!
Though darkened with sulphur, though cloven with steel,
The blue arch will brighten, the waters will heal!”
Unity Quotes Source: Brother Jonathan's Lament for Sister Caroline
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“Little I ask; my wants are few;
I only wish a hut of stone
(A very plain brown stone will do),
That I may call my own;
And close at hand is such a one
In yonder street that fronts the sun.”
Wishes Quotes Source: Contentment
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“And when you stick on conversation's burs,
Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs.”
Conversation Quotes Source: A Rhymed Lesson--Urania
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“I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica could be sunk
to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind
and all the worse for the fishes.”
Medicine Quotes Source: Lecture before the Harvard Medical School
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“There are three wicks you know to the lamp of a man's life:
brain, blood, and breath. Press the brain a little, its light
goes out, followed by both the others. Stop the heart a minute,
and out go all three of the wicks. Choke the air out of the
lungs, and presently the fluid ceases to supply the other centres
of flame, and all is soon stagnation, cold, and darkness.”
Health Quotes Source: Professor at the Breakfast Table (XI)
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“The freeman casting, with unpurchased hand,
The vote that shakes the turrets of the land.”
Voting Quotes Source: A Metrical Essay (l. 83)
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“I never dare to write
As funny as I can.”
Humor Quotes Source: The Height of the Ridiculous
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“Stop not, unthinking, every friend you meet
To spin your wordy fabric in the street;
While you are emptying your colloquial pack,
The fiend Lumbago jumps upon his back.”
Talk Quotes Source: Urania--A Rhymed Lesson, l. 439
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“The crack-brained bobolink courts his crazy mate,
Poised on a bulrush tipsy with his weight.”
Bobolinks Quotes Source: Spring
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“A man must get a thing before he can forget it.”
Forgetfulness Quotes Source: Medical Essays (300)
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“The wind blows out, the bubble dies;
The spring entomb'd in autumn lies;
The dew dries up; the star is shot;
The flight is past--and man forgot.”
Forgetfulness Quotes Source: Medical Essays (300)
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“Science is the topography of ignorance.”
Science Quotes Source: Medical Essays (211)
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“There are a good many real miseries in life that we cannot help
smiling at, but they are the smiles that make wrinkles and not
dimples.”
Misery Quotes Source: Poet at the Breakfast Table (III)
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“The lengthening shadows wait
The first pale stars of twilight.”
Twilight Quotes Source: Poems of the Class of '29--Even Song (st. 6)
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“Sweet shadows of twilight! how calm their repose,
While the dewdrops fall soft in the breast of the rose!
How blest to the toiler his hour of release
When the vesper is heard with its whisper of peace!”
Twilight Quotes Source: Poems of the Class of '29--Our Banker (st. 12)
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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Quotes, Quotations, and Sayings
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