"Oliver Wendell Holmes" was the name of two prominent men, father and son:

*Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894), poet, physician, and essayist

*Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935), justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

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If I were dying my last words would be: Have faith and pursue the unknown end.

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Every pursuit is great when greatly pursued.

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Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall. -Oliver Wendell Holmes
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The great thing in this world is not so much where you stand, as in what direction you are moving.

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Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.

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Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them. -Oliver Wendell Holmes
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There are one-story intellects, two-story intellects, and three-story intellects with skylights. All fact collectors with no aim beyond their facts are one-story men. Two-story men compare reason and generalize, using labors of the fact collectors as well as their own. Three-story men idealize, imagine, and predict. Their best illuminations come from above through the skylight.

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To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad.

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Even a dog knows the difference between being kicked and being stumbled over. -Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Greatness is not in were we stand, but in what direction we are moving. We must sail sometimes with the wind, and somtimes agaisnt it - but sail we must. And not drift, nor lie at anchor.

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Science is good furniture for one's upper chamber, if there is common sense below.

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Why can't somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says, and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks. -Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Beat a man with the strength of you argument, not with the strength of your arm.

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The life of the law has not been logic but experience.

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Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite. -Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth.

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It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.

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Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening. -Oliver Wendell Holmes
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A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.

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Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one.

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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. -Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtaxed.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes
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A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. -Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Death tugs at my ear and says: 'Live, I am coming.'

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

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Stupidity often saves a man from going mad. -Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Between two groups of men that want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds I see no remedy except force... It seems to me that every society rests on the death of men.

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

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Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned. -Oliver Wendell Holmes
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