Heredity is an omnibus in which all our ancestors ride and sometimes one of them puts his head out and embarrasses us.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Husband and wife come to look alike at last.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirm the worth of life as an end in itself as against the saints who deny it.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

I confess that altruistic and cynically selfish talk seem to me about equally unreal. With all humility I think 'whatsoever thy hand finder to do do it with thy might' infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one's neighbor as one's self. If you want to hit a bird on the wing you must have all your will in focus you must not be thinking about yourself and equally you must not be thinking about your neighbor you must be living with your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

If I had a formula for bypassing trouble I wouldn't pass it around. Wouldn't be doing anybody a favor. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't say embrace trouble. That's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sometimes sail with the wind and sometimes against it - but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

I firmly believe that if the whole material media as now used could be sunk to the bottom of the sea it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

If I were dying, my last words would be: Have faith and pursue the unknown end.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

If you think that I am going to bother myself again before I die about social improvement or read any of those stinking upward and on warders - you err - I mean to have some good out of being old.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes