Oliver Wendell Holmes

Don’t ever think the poetry is dead in an old man because his forehead is wrinkled, or that his manhood has left him when his hand trembles! If they ever were there, they are there still.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

Old age is fifteen years older than I am.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at it.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

Life is difficult and complicated and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But in fact they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

In youth we learn; in age we understand.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

—Oliver Wendell Holmes