Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us.

The human mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.

Nobody talks much who doesn’t say unwise things – things he did not mean to say. Talk, to me, is only spading up the ground for crops of thought. I can’t answer for what will turn up.

Man’s mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimension.

If a man is in a minority of one, we lock him up.

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.

Don’t flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.