Oliver Wendell Holmes

To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor.

A mind stretched by a new ideanever shrinks back to its original proportions. ~

When the style is fully formed if it has a sweet undersong we call it beautiful and the writer may do what he likes in words or syntax.

When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as the poetry of sentences.

We must think things not words or at least we must constantly translate our words into the facts for which they stand if we are to keep to the real and the true.

Man has his will - but woman has her way.

Nature is in earnest when she makes a woman.

Rough work iconoclasm but the only way to get at the truth.

Don't be consistent but be simply true.

Take your needle my child and work at your pattern it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that one stitch at a time taken patiently and the pattern will come out all right like embroidery.

Life is a great bundle of little things.

Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.

When I want to understand what is happening today or try to decide what will happen tomorrow I look back.

The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city.

The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms.

Talking is like playing on the harp there is as much in laying the hand on the strings to stop their vibrations as in twanging them to bring out their music.

The reward of the general is not a bigger tent but command.

The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars nor its great scholars great men.