Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Our test of truth is a reference to either a present or imagined future majority in favour of our view.
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Our test of truth is a reference to either a present or imagined future majority in favour of our view.
The great end of being is to harmonize man with the order of things, and the church has been a good pitch-pipe, and may be so still.
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The great end of being is to harmonize man with the order of things, and the church has been a good pitch-pipe, and may be so still.
Young feller, you will never appreciate the potentialities of the English language until you have heard a Southern mule driver search the soul of a mule.
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Young feller, you will never appreciate the potentialities of the English language until you have heard a Southern mule driver search the soul of a mule.
It takes me several days, after I get back to Boston, to realize that the reference “the president” refers to the president of Harvard and not to a minor official in Washington.
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It takes me several days, after I get back to Boston, to realize that the reference “the president” refers to the president of Harvard and not to a minor official in Washington.
Old age is like an opium dream. Nothing seems real except the unreal.
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Old age is like an opium dream. Nothing seems real except the unreal.
Man has will, but woman has her way.
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Man has will, but woman has her way.
Who does not feel that Nansen’s account of his search for the Pole rather loses than gains in ideal satisfaction by the pretense of a few trifling acquisitions for science?
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Who does not feel that Nansen’s account of his search for the Pole rather loses than gains in ideal satisfaction by the pretense of a few trifling acquisitions for science?
Be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhaps a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out.
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Be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhaps a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out.
Pretty much all law consists in forbidding men to do something that they want to do.
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Pretty much all law consists in forbidding men to do something that they want to do.
I have always sought to guide the future-but it is very lonely sometimes trying to play God.
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I have always sought to guide the future-but it is very lonely sometimes trying to play God.
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