Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. quotes - page 2

Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned. (Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.)
I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy - I don't disparage envy but I don't accept it as legitimately my master.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Our test of truth is a reference to either a present or an imagined future majority in favor of our view.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Eloquence may set fire to reason.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
And silence, like a poultice, comes To heal the blows of sound.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
I find 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.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss And hug, 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.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Beware how you take away hope from any human being. (Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.)
The degree of civilization which a people has reached, no doubt, is marked by their anxiety to do as they would be done by.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
There is in all men a demand for the superlative, so much so that the poor devil who has no other way of reaching it attains it by getting drunk.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what ourcountry has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
State interference is an evil, where it cannot be shown to be a good.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
General propositions do not decide concrete cases.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
The aim of the law is not to punish sins, but is to prevent certain external results.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
One of the eternal conflicts out of which life is made up is that between the effort of every man to get the most he can for his services, and that of society, disguised under the name of capital, to get his services for the least possible return.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen. (Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.)
Nothing is so commonplace has the wish to be remarkable.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Lawyers spend their professional careers shoveling smoke.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Whatever disagreement there may be as to the scope of the phrase "due process of law" there can be no doubt that it embraces the fundamental conception of a fair trial, with opportunity to be heard.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.