A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

A minister is coming down every generation nearer and nearer to the common level of the useful citizen - no oracle at all but a man of more than average moral instincts who is he knows anything knows how little he knows.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

An older author is constantly rediscovering himself in the more or less fossilized productions of his earlier years.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Apology - a desperate habit and one that is rarely cured.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Apology is only egotism wrong side out.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

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.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

A sense of wrongdoing is an enhancement of pleasure.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

A sick man that gets talking about himself a woman that gets talking about her baby and an author that begins reading out of his own book never know when to stop.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes