Simple people... are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Amen of nature is always a flower.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts but learning how to make facts live.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

The man who is always worrying about whether or not his soul would be damned generally has a soul that isn't worth a damn.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men - from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice.
Oliver Wendell Holmes