Nothing is so commonplace has the wish to be remarkable. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr Copy Share Image
The ideas of the classics, so far as living, are our commonplaces. It is the modern books that give us the latest and most profound conceptions. It seems to me rather a lazy makeshift to mumble over the familiar. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr Copy Share Image
Blood is a destiny. One's genius descends in the stream from long lines of ancestry. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr Copy Share Image
If you don't know what you want, you will probably never get it. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr Copy Share Image
Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr Copy Share Image
It is mere childishness to expect men to believe as their fathers did; that is, if they have any minds of their own. The… — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr Copy Share Image
Longevity is having a chronic disease - and taking care of it. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr Copy Share Image
As for the excellent little wretches who grow up in what they are taught, with never a scruple or a query, ... they signify… — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr Copy Share Image
On every stem, on every leaf,... and at the root of everything that grew, was a professional specialist in the shape of grub, caterpillar,… — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr Copy Share Image
A good soldier, like a good horse, cannot be of a bad color. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr Copy Share Image
Free competition is worth more to society than it costs. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr Copy Share Image
In my opinion, economists and sociologists are the people to whom we ought to turn more than we do for instruction in the grounds… — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr Copy Share Image
The great end of being is to harmonize man with the order of things, and the church has been a good pitch-pipe, and may… — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr Copy Share Image
Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr Copy Share Image
