| 43 Famous Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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“Of course everybody likes and respects self-made men. It is a
great deal better to be made in that way than not to be made at
all.”
Education Quotes Source: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (l. 1)
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“Everything is twice as large, measured on a three-year-old's
three-foot scale on a thirty-year-old's six-foot scale.”
Comparisons Quotes Source: Poet at the Breakfast Table (I)
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“Yes, child of suffering, thou may'st well be sure
He who ordained the Sabbath loves the poor!”
Poverty Quotes Source: Urania; or, A Rhymed Lesson (l. 325)
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“As vessels starting from ports thousands of miles apart pass
close to each other in the naked breadth of the ocean, nay,
sometimes even touch in the dark.”
Meeting Quotes Source: Professor at the Breakfast Table
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“Vain? Let it be so! Nature was her teacher,
What if a lovely and unsistered creature
Loved her own harmless gift of pleasing feature.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.,”
Vanity Quotes Source: Iris, Her Book--The Professor at the Breakfast-Table (X)
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“Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits the all.”
Lying Quotes Source: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (VI)
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“Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were
only the history of pinheads.”
Libraries Quotes Source: Poet at the Breakfast Table (VIII)
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“The first thing naturally when one enters a scholar's study or
library, is to look at his books. One gets a notion very
speedily of his tastes and the range of his pursuits by a glance
round his book-shelves.”
Libraries Quotes Source: Poet at the Breakfast Table (VIII)
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“Ay, here her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky.”
Flags Quotes Source: A Metrical Essay
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“Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the God of storms,
The lightning and the gale.”
Flags Quotes Source: A Metrical Essay
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“It is not often that an opinion is worth expressing, which cannot
take care of itself.”
Opinion Quotes Source: Medical Essays (211)
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“One flag, one land, one heart, one hand,
One Nation evermore!
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.,”
Patriotism Quotes Source: Voyage of the Good Ship Union--Poems of the Class of '29
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“Scarce one tall frigate walks the sea
Or skirts the safer shores
Of all that bore to victory
Our stout old Commodores.”
Navy Quotes Source: at a dinner given to Admiral Farragut
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“The hat is the ultimatum moriens of respectability.”
Hatters Quotes Source: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (VIII)
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“I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat
And the breeches and all that
Are so queer.”
Hatters Quotes Source: The Last Leaf
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“Thou art a female, Katydid!
I know it by the trill
That quivers through thy piercing notes
So petulant and shrill.
I think there is a knot of you
Beneath the hollow tree,
A knot of spinster Katydids,--
Do Katydids drink tea?”
Katydids Quotes Source: To an Insect
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“Grave is the Master's look; his forehead wears
Thick rows of wrinkles, prints of worrying cares:
Uneasy lies the heads of all that rule,
His worst of all whose kingdom is a school.
Supreme he sits; before the awful frown
That binds his brows the boldest eye goes down;
Not more submissive Israel heard and saw
At Sinai's foot the Giver of the Law.”
Teaching Quotes Source: The School Boy
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“People that make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on
the railroad tracks.”
Jesting Quotes Source: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (I)
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“It cannot be repeated too often that the safety of great wealth
with us lies in obedience to the new version of the Old World
axiom--Richesse oblige.”
Wealth Quotes Source: A Moral Antipathy--Introduction
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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."”
Luxury Quotes Source: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (VI)
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“Boston State-house is the hub of the solar system. You couldn't
pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation
straightened out for a crow-bar.”
Boston Quotes Source: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (VI)
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“Day hath put on his jacket, and around
His burning bosom buttoned it with stars.”
Evening Quotes Source: Evening
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“I find that the great thing in this world is not so much where we
stand as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of
heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes
against it--but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.”
Innovation Quotes Source: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
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“No, my friends, I go (always other things being equal) for the
man that inherits family traditions and the cumulative humanities
of at least four or five generations.”
Ancestry Quotes Source: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (ch. I)
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“The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of
each and every town or city.”
Cities Quotes Source: Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (VI)
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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Quotes, Quotations, and Sayings
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