It is better to be seventy years young than forty years old!
—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.
Topics: Passion, Equality
Leisure only means a chance to do other jobs that demand attention.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Leisure
The riders in a race do not stop short when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill. There is time to hear the kind voice of friends and to say to one’s self: “The work is done.” But just as one says that, the answer comes: “The race is over, but the work never is done while the power to work remains.” The canter that brings you to a standstill need not be only coming to rest. It cannot be while you still live. For to live is to function. That is all there is in living.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Vision, Life and Living
Systems die; instincts remain.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Reason, Emotions, Instincts
Consciously or unconsciously we all strive to make the kind of a world we like.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Action
With all humility, I think, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” Infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one’s neighbor as one’s self. If you want to hit a bird on the wing, you must have all your will in focus, you must not be thinking about yourself, and equally, you must not be thinking about your neighbor: you must be living in your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Concentration, Focus, Humility
Nature has but one judgment on wrong conduct — if you can call that a judgment which seemingly has no reference to conduct as such — the judgment of death.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
A day’s impact is better than a month of dead pull.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Value of a Day, Work, Time Management
Fresh air and innocence are good if you don’t take too much of them—but I always remember that most of the achievements and pleasures of life are in bad air.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Pleasure
There are many things which we can afford to forget which it is yet well to learn.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Learning
But the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done…. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. It does not even protect a man from an injunction against uttering words that may have all the effect of force…. The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Freedom
For me at least there came moments when faith wavered. But there is the great lesson and the great triumph: keep the fire burning until, by and by, out of the mass of sordid details there comes some result.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Resolve, Perseverance, Endurance
A new untruth is better than an old truth.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Truth
With all humility, I think, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” Infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one’s neighbor as one’s self. If you want to hit a bird on the wing, you must have all your will in focus, you must not be thinking about yourself, and equally, you must not be thinking about your neighbor: you must be living in your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Benevolence, Humility
Realize life as an end in itself. Functioning is all there is.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Time Management, Value of Time
Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Time, Youth
I always say, as you know, that if my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them. It’s my job.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Life, Getting Going, Ability, Life and Living, Sharing, Procrastination, Inaction, Passion
Every living sentence which shows a mind at work for itself is to be welcomed. It is not the first use but the tiresome repetition of inadequate catch words which I am observing—phrases which originally were contributions, but which, by their very felicity, delay further analysis for fifty years. That comes from the same source as dislike of novelty—intellectual indolence or weakness—a slackening in the eternal pursuit of the more exact.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Civilization
Gentlemen, to the lady without whom I should never have survived for eighty, nor sixty, nor yet thirty years. Her smile has been my lyric, her understanding, the rhythm of the stanza. She has been the spring wherefrom I have drawn the power to write the words. She is the poem of my life.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Life is a romantic business. It is painting a picture, not doing a sum—but you have to make the romance, and it will come to the question how much fire you have in your belly.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Life and Living, Happiness
A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Words
A question like the present should be disposed of without undue delay. But a State cannot be expected to move with the celerity of a private business man; it is enough if it proceeds, in the language of the English Chancery, with all deliberate speed.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Life and Living, Goals, Aspirations
Imitation is a necessity of human nature.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Imitation, Role models
Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Law, Lawyers
Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our father’s have done them or our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a large part than what we suspect of what we think.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Expectation
The law embodies the story of a nation’s development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Justice
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Louis Brandeis American Jurist
- Hugo Black American Politician
- Elliot Richardson American Lawyer
- William Blackstone English Judge
- Felix Frankfurter American Judge
- Albert Pike American Masonic Scholar
- John Quincy Adams American Head of State
- Archibald Cox American Lawyer
- Learned Hand American Jurist
- Edward Everett Hale American Unitarian Clergyman
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