Classic Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes

1841-1935

American Jurist

A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend.

A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.

A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.

A new untruth is better than an old truth.

A person is always startled when he hears himself called old for the first time.

A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts
and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.

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 time in which it is used.

Apology is only egotism wrong side out.

As life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time, at the peril of being not to have lived.