Oliver Wendell Holmes

Famous quotes containing the words oliver wendell holmes, wendell holmes, oliver wendell, oliver 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)

    “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)

    “They say that in his prime,
    Ere the pruning-knife of Time
    Cut him down,
    Not a better man was found
    By the Crier on his round
    Through the town.”
    —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)

    “He took the paper, and I watched,
    And saw him peep within;
    At the first line he read, his face
    Was all upon the grin.”
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)