Oliver Wendell Holmes

Speak clearly if you speak at all Carve every word before you let it fall.

The secret of my success is that at an early age I discovered I was not God.

A sick man that gets talking about himself a woman that gets talking about her baby and an author that begins reading out of his own book never know when to stop.

Imitation is a necessity of human nature.

Apology - a desperate habit and one that is rarely cured.

Men are idolaters and want something to look at and kiss and hug or throw themselves down before they always did they always will and if you don't make it of wood you must make it of words.

A minister is coming down every generation nearer and nearer to the common level of the useful citizen - no oracle at all but a man of more than average moral instincts who if he knows anything knows how little he knows.

We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to.

I hate being placed on committees. They are always having meetings at which half are absent and the rest late.

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye the more light you pour upon it the more it will contract.

When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The author may arrange the gems effectively but their shape and lustre have been given by the attrition of ages.

When you write in prose you say what you mean. When you write in rhyme you say what you must.

For me at least there came moments when faith wavered. But there is the great lesson and the great triumph: keep the fire burning until by and by out of the mass of sordid details there comes some result.

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.

Realize life as an end in itself. Functioning is all there is.

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

Pick my left pocket of its silver dime but spare the right-it holds my golden time!

A day's impact is better than a month of dead pull.