Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

    A great calamity ... is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened.
    Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    Alas for those two loving ones! she waked not from her swound,
    And he was taken with the cramp, and in the waves was drowned;
    But Fate has metamorphosed them, in pity of their woe,
    And now they keep an oyster-shop for mermaids down below.
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    O, better that her shattered hulk
    Should sink beneath the wave;
    Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
    And there should be her grave;
    Nail to the mast her holy flag,
    Set every threadbare sail,
    And give her to the god of storms,
    The lightning and the gale!
    Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    And he had an ethical bypass at birth.
    Stanley Weiser, U.S. screenwriter, and Oliver Stone. Marvin (John C. McGinley)

    Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is glorious; but a weak flavor of genius in an essentially common person is detestable. It spoils the grand neutrality of a commonplace character, as the rinsings of an unwashed wine-glass spoil a draught of fair water.
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)