Inspirational Quotations

Today is the 201st birthday of American physician, professor, lecturer, and author Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (August 29, 1809—October 7, 1894.)

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. briefly studied law before turning to the medical profession. As a teacher of medicine at Dartmouth and Harvard, he initiated and advocated far-reaching medical reforms. He is the father of the renowned American jurist and Civil War officer, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Throughout his life, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. wrote poetry, novels, and essays. His peers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell, regarded Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. as one of the best writers of the 19th century. His most famous works include The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858), The Professor of the Breakfast-Table (1860,) and The Poet of the Breakfast-Table (1872) and the biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1884.)

Inspirational Quotations by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Men are idolaters and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you don’t make it out of wood, you must make it out of words.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a deal longer.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

Knowledge and timber shouldn’t be much used, till they are seasoned.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power; that is all.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

Now habit is a labor-saving invention which enables a man to get along with less fuel.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

Be polite and generous, but don’t undervalue yourself. You will be useful, at any rate; you may just as well be happy, while you are about it.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

He must be a poor creature that does not often repeat himself. Imagine the author of the excellent piece of advice, “Know thyself,” never alluding to that sentiment again during the course of a protracted existence!
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

I talk half the time to find out my own thoughts, as a school-boy turns his pockets inside out to see what is in them. One brings to light all sorts of personal property he had forgotten in his inventory.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. It has come to you over a new route, by a new and express train of associations.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

Knowledge—it excites prejudices to call it science—is advancing as irresistibly, as majestically, as remorselessly as the ocean moves in upon the shore.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

Leisure only means a chance to do other jobs that demand attention.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (American Jurist)

While you cannot resolve what you are, at last you will be nothing.
—Martial (Ancient Roman Latin Poet)

Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort which it brings.
—Walter Lippmann (American Journalist)

Presence is more than just being there.
—Malcolm Forbes (American Publisher)

Lying to yourself about specific actions is easier than re-defining the bounds of your imagined identity… When I see once-ethical men devolve into moral grey, they still identify as upstanding.
—Ben Casnocha (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

Channels are blocked in the mind, from the day. Lie down in blackness of night, forgotten remnants rush to the mind, or creeping slowly appear in the dreams.
—Nathaniel LeTonnerre

Most of us are aware of and pretend to detest the barefaced instances of that hypocrisy by which men deceive others, but few of us are upon our guard or see that more fatal hypocrisy by which we deceive and over-reach our own hearts.
—Laurence Sterne (Irish Anglican Novelist)

Do not value money for any more nor any less than its worth; it is a good servant but a bad master.
—Alexandre Dumas, fils

If wisdom and diamonds grew on the same tree we could soon tell how much men loved wisdom.
—Lemuel K. Washburn

Sickness comes on horseback and departs on foot.
—Dutch Proverb

Everybody’s 12 years old in an apple orchard.
—Rachael Ray (American TV Personality)

Happiness is often the result of being too busy to be miserable.
—Unknown

When looking back, usually I’m more sorry for the things I didn’t do than for the things I shouldn’t have done.
—Malcolm Forbes (American Publisher)

Take spring when it comes, and rejoice. Take happiness when it comes, and rejoice. Take love when it comes, and rejoice.
—Carl Anton Ewald

There is an objective reality out there, but we view it through the spectacles of our beliefs, attitudes, and values.
—David G. Myers

You live longer once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is wasted.
—Unknown

Whoever one is, and wherever one is, one is always in the wrong if one is rude.
—Maurice Baring

To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another.
—Katherine Paterson (American Novelist)

A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne (American Novelist)

You’re not free until you’ve been made captive by supreme belief.
—Marianne Moore

To expect happiness without giving up negative action is like holding your hand in a fire and hoping not to be burned. Of course, no one actually wants to suffer, to be sick, to be cold or hungry—but as long as we continue to indulge in wrong doing we will never put an end to suffering. Likewise, we will never achieve happiness, except through positive deeds, words, and thoughts. Positive action is something we have to cultivate ourselves; it can be neither bought nor stolen, and no one ever stumbles on it just by chance.
—Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche (Tibetan Buddhist Religious Leader)

I doubt not that in due time, when the arts are brought to perfection, some means will be found to give a sound head to a man who has none at all.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he has lost no time.
—Francis Bacon (English Philosopher)

Fear and lies fester in darkness. The truth may wound, but it cuts clean.
—Jacqueline Carey (American Novelist)

That best academy, a mother’s knee.
—James Russell Lowell (American Poet)

It is no easy thing for a principle to become a man’s own unless each day he maintains it and works it out in his life.
—Epictetus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Misfortunes one can endure—they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one’s own faults—Ah! there is the sting of life.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Mistakes are the usual bridge between inexperience and wisdom.
—Phyllis Theroux

The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core strength within you that survives all hurt.
—Max Lerner

The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine.
—Mike Murdock

What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn’t much better than tedious disease.
—George D. Prentice (American Journalist)

We are but dreams, and dreams possess no life by their own right.
—Gene Wolfe

A leader or a man of action in a crisis almost always acts subconsciously and then thinks of the reasons for his action.
—Jawaharlal Nehru (Indian Head of State)

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
—Herm Albright (German-American Artist, Columnist)

Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.
—Rainer Maria Rilke (Austrian Poet)

Hate leaves ugly scars, love leaves beautiful ones.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

Having your fate rest in the hands of a jury is the same as entrusting yourself to surgery with a mentally retarded doctor.
—Unknown

What we forgive too freely doesn’t stay forgiven.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

Time has a wonderful way of weeding out the trivial.
—Richard Sapir (American Novelist)

The function of values is to give us the illusion of purpose in life.
—Dero A. Saunders (American Journalist)

No man dares say so much of what he thinks as to appear to himself an extremist.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

To a mathematician the eleventh means only a single unit : to the bushman who cannot count further than his ten fingers it is an incalculable myriad.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

Those who understand evil pardon it : those who resent it destroy it.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

Moderation is never applauded for its own sake.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to the number and voracity of its parasites.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

The difference between the shallowest routineer and the deepest thinker appears, to the latter, trifling ; to the former, infinite.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are disgraced by the inferior.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

Greatness is the secular name for Divinity : both mean simply what lies beyond us.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the parent’s first duty.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

Imprisonment is as irrevocable as death.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

A learned man is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his false knowledge : it is more dangerous than ignorance.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

The man with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.
—Frederick Douglass (American Abolitionist)

Freedom can never be reached by the weak. Throw away all weakness. Tell your body that it is strong, tell your mind that it is strong, and have unbounded faith and hope in yourself.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

It is seldom indeed that one parts on good terms, because if one were on good terms one would not part.
—Marcel Proust (French Novelist)

For some moments in life there are no words.
—David Seltzer (American Screenwriter)

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

Sooner or later you’ve heard all your best friends have to say. Then comes the tolerance of real love.
—Ned Rorem

The door to virtue is heavy and hard to push.
—Chinese Proverb

I am treating you as my friend, asking you to share my present minuses in the hope I can ask you to share my future pluses.
—Katherine Mansfield (New Zealand-born British Author)

One’s suffering disappears when one lets oneself go, when one yields – even to sadness.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (French Novelist, Aviator)

Every experience, however bitter, has its lesson, and to focus one’s attention on the lesson helps one overcome the bitterness.
—Edward Howard Griggs

Determined efforts are better than a miracle.
—Tonbo

The closest to perfection a person ever comes is when he fills out a job application form.
—Stan Randall (Canadian Businessperson)

It is the beautiful bird that gets caged.
—Chinese Proverb

Strength is Life, Weakness is Death.|Expansion is Life, Contraction is Death.|Love is Life, Hatred is Death.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

The most decisive actions of our life—I mean those that are most likely to decide the whole course of our future—are, more often than not, unconsidered.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. … Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.
—Barack Obama (American Head of State)

Courage is sustained by calling up anew the vision of the goal.
—Antonin Sertillanges

Since we must all die sooner or later, let us enjoy life while we can.
—Otomo no Tabito

Virtue is an angel; but she is a blind one and must ask of knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal. Mere knowledge, on the other hand, like a Swiss mercenary, is ready to combat either in the ranks of sin or under the banners of righteousness—ready to forge cannon balls or to print New Testaments, to navigate a corsair’s vessel or a missionary ship.
—Horace Mann (American Educator)