Oliver Wendell Holmes

Famous quotes containing the words oliver wendell holmes, wendell holmes, oliver wendell and/or wendell:

    Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide—that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life—are alike forbidden.
    Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    And if I should live to be
    The last leaf upon the tree
    In the spring,
    Let them smile, as I do now,
    At the old forsaken bough
    Where I cling.
    Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    Little of all we value here
    Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year
    Without both feeling and looking queer.
    In fact, there’s nothing that keeps its youth,
    So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)