Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

    Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it.
    Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935)

    Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.
    —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)

    My grandmother stood among her kettles and ladles.
    Smiling, in faulty grammar,
    She praised my fortune and urged my lofty career.
    So to please her I studied—but I will remember always
    How she poured confusion out, how she cooled and labeled
    All the wild sauces of the brimming year.
    —Mary Oliver (b. 1935)

    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)