Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

    —First a shiver, and then a thrill,
    Then something decidedly like a spill,—
    And the parson was sitting up on a rock,
    At half-past nine by the meet’n’-house clock,—
    Just the hour of the Earthquake shock!
    MWhat do you think the parson found,
    When he got up and stared around?
    The poor old chaise in a heap or mound,
    As if it had been to the mill and ground!
    Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    Speak clearly, if you speak at all;
    Carve every word before you let it fall.
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    The freeman, casting with unpurchased hand
    The vote that shakes the turrets of the land.
    Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    When it’s over I don’t want to wonder
    if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
    I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
    or full of argument.
    I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
    —Mary Oliver (b. 1935)

    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)