Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Don't be 'consistent', but be simply true.
The very aim and end of our institutions is just this: that we may think what we like and say what we think.
Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.
Have the courage to act instead of react.
The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.
The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.
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.
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse. One comfort we have - Cincinnati sounds worse.
The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius.
A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.
A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day.
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.
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.
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.
The man who is always worrying about whether or not his soul would be damned generally has a soul that isn't worth a damn.
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.
The mind of a bigot to the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it contracts.
Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.
Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
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.
Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.
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.
