Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

    The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.
    Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    Year after year beheld the silent toil
    That spread his lustrous coil;
    Still as the spiral grew,
    He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,
    Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
    Built up its idle door,
    Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    He sent for lancewood to make the thills;
    The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees;
    The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese,
    But lasts like iron for things like these;
    The hubs of logs from the “Settler’s ellum,”—
    Last of its timber,—they couldn’t sell ‘em,
    Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    I have this very moment finished reading a novel called The Vicar of Wakefield [by Oliver Goldsmith].... It appears to me, to be impossible any person could read this book through with a dry eye and yet, I don’t much like it.... There is but very little story, the plot is thin, the incidents very rare, the sentiments uncommon, the vicar is contented, humble, pious, virtuous—but upon the whole the book has not at all satisfied my expectations.
    Frances Burney (1752–1840)

    Little-minded people’s thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes’ conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve.
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    “No, no; the real name,” said Holmes sweetly. “It is always awkward doing business with an alias.”
    Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)