Best Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes

Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes About Law, Simplicity, Free Speech, War, Music, Inspirational, Love, Civil War & Success! An American poet and writer, Oliver Wendell Holmes, his contemporaries rank him as one of the greatest authors of his time. In Boston, Massachusetts, on March 8, 1841, he was born. Private schools were Holmes’ first educational experience, and in 1857 he began his studies at Harvard College.

He enrolled in the Union Army at the start of the Civil War in 1861. “Harvard’s Army” was the moniker given to the 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, which Holmes served in during his time as a recruit. Three times throughout the conflict, he was wounded in combat. At Harvard Law School in 1864, Holmes enrolled in his first course. He started practicing law when he graduated in 1866 and passed the bar in 1867.

Through his lawyer work, Holmes wrote several law-related articles and essays. To put it another way, from 1870 to 1873, he was the American Law Review’s editor-in-chief. An anthology of his writings on the subject, The Common Law, did appear in 1881. He compiled his lectures and articles on the subject into The Common Law, which was published in 1881. Holmes was chosen as a justice of the supreme court of Massachusetts in 1883. In 1899, he was named chief judge of the court.

Holmes was selected to the Supreme Court by President Roosevelt in 1902. He was known as “the Great Dissenter” by his colleagues on the court because of his many dissents from their rulings. In the case of Abrams v. the United States, Holmes wrote a notable dissenting opinion. At the end of his almost 30-year career on the Supreme Court, Justice Holmes left his position in January 1932. He passed away in Washington, D.C., on March 6, 1935.

Best Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes

1. “Death tugs at my ear and says, ‘Live. I am coming.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

2. “Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

3. “The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library, ‘The medicines of the soul.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

4. “A man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

5. “It’s faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

6. “The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

7. “Man has his will, but woman has her way.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

8. “A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

9. “Beware how you take away hope from another human being.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

10. “Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

11. “What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred?” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

12. “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.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

13. “Speak clearly if you speak at all, carve every word before you let it fall.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

14. “A mind that is stretched by new experiences can never go back to its old dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

15. “Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

16. “Learn the sweet magic of a cheerful face.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

17. “Science is the topography of ignorance.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

18. “One’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

19. “I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

20. “The young man knows the rules but the old man knows the exceptions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

21. “Even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

22. “The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are going.” – Oliver Wendall Holmes Jr.

23. “The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

24. “I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

25. “A child’s education should begin at least 100 years before he was born.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

26. “The man of action has the present, but the thinker controls the future.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

27. “A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in colour and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

28. “We have shared the incommunicable experience of war, we have felt, we still feel, the passion of life to its top. In our youth our hearts were touched with fire.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

29. “I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving – 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

30. “The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes