Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

"Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out."

"A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide."

"I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions - adding that no general proposition is worth a damn."

"Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor. But if a man hasn't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has, the worse for his patient."

"The Amen of nature is always a flower."

"Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall."

"Love prefers twilight to daylight."

"Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear."

"Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts."

"I like children; I like 'em, and I respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by them."

"Every library should try to complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads."

"I hate paying taxes. But I love the civilization they give me"

"When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe... that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas-- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment. As all life is an experiment. Every year if not every day we wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge."

"Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts."

"Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up."

"The Last Leaf I saw him once before,As he passed by the door,And again The pavement stones resound,As he totters o'er the ground With his cane. 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. But now he walks the streets,And looks at all he meets Sad and wan,And he shakes his feeble head,That it seems as if he said,"They are gone."The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom,And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb. My grandmamma has said Poor old lady, she is dead Long ago That he had a Roman nose,And his cheek was like a rose In the snow;But now his nose is thin,And it rests upon his chin Like a staff,And a crook is in his back,And a melancholy crack In his laugh. I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here;But the old three-cornered hat,And the breeches, and all that,Are so queer!And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring,Let them smile, as I do now,At the old forsaken bough Where I cling."

"Trouble makes us one with every human being in the world - and unless we touch others, we're out of touch with life."

"Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow."

"Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them."

"The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library,'The medicines of the soul."