Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809-1894) was an American physician, poet, and polymath based in Boston. Grouped among the fireside poets, he was acclaimed by his peers as one of the best writers of the day. His most famous prose works are the “Breakfast-Table” series, which began with The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table.

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Here is a selection of his most frequently quoted observations:

o The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions. o Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.

o There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise.

o 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.

o A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.

o I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.

o But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.

o We do not quit playing because we grow old, we grow old because we quit playing.

o Fresh air is good if you do not take too much of it; most of the achievements and pleasures of life are in bad air.

o Have the courage to act instead of react.

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

o 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. It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.

o It’s faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.

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

o Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future.

o Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.

o Don’t flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.

o Love prefers twilight to daylight.

o Simple people… are very quick to see the live facts which are going on about them.

o 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. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel of the Resurrection.

o A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.

o A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day.

o Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped past him.

o 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.

o Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel of the Resurrection.

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