The foliage has been losing it...

The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many.

Apologizing - a very desperate...

Apologizing - a very desperate habit - one that is rarely cured. Apology is only egotism wrong side out.

We expect more of ourselves th...

We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to.

Many ideas grow better when tr...

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.

It is a good plan to have a bo...

It is a good plan to have a book with you in all places and at all times. If you are presently without, hurry without delay to the nearest shop and buy one of mine.

And if I should live to be

And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.

Oliver Wendell Holmes 03.03.2018 03:03:03 352 quotes

Seventeen hundred and fifty-fi...

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus was then alive,--
Snuffy old drone from the German hive.

Me wretched! Let me curr to qu...

Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine shades!
Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids!
O, might I vole to some umbrageous clump,--
Depart,--be off,--excede,--evade,--erump!

No families take so little med...

No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.

The morning cup of coffee has ...

The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce.

Man is born a predestined idea...

Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, and to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make an ideal.

In my opinion, economists and ...

In my opinion, economists and sociologists are the people to whom we ought to turn more than we do for instruction in the grounds and foundations of all rational decisions.

We are all tattooed in our cra...

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.

The provisions of the Constitu...

The provisions of the Constitution are not mathematical formulas having their essence in their form; they are organic, living institutions transplanted from English soil. Their significance is vital, not formal; it is to be gathered not simply by taking the words and a dictionary, but by considering their origin and the line of their growth.

When men have realized that ti...

When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe... that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas-- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment. As all life is an experiment. Every year if not every day we wager our salvation upon

The history of what the law ha...

The history of what the law has been is necessary to the knowledge of what the law is.

Who does not feel that Nansen'...

Who does not feel that Nansen's account of his search for the Pole rather loses than gains in ideal satisfaction by the pretense of a few trifling acquisitions for science?

War? War is an organized bore....

War? War is an organized bore.

The ideas of the classics, so ...

The ideas of the classics, so far as living, are our commonplaces. It is the modern books that give us the latest and most profound conceptions. It seems to me rather a lazy makeshift to mumble over the familiar.

Men are tattooed with their sp...

Men are tattooed with their special beliefs like so many South Sea Islanders; but a real human heart with divine love in it beats with the same glow under all the patterns of all earth's thousand tribes.