Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Taxes are what we pay for civilized society."

"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,  As the swift seasons roll!  Leave thy low-vaulted past!"

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

"The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power. The prize of the general is not a bigger tent, but command."

"A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times."

"Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all."

"The sound of a kiss is not so loudas that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer."

"Where we love is home, Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts."

"The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic."

"Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else."

"Apology is only egotism wrong side out."

"Certitude is not the test of certainty."

"Certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man."

"Nothing is so commonplace as to wish to be remarkable."

"The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions."

"Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth."

"A new untruth is better than an old truth."

"Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light."

"Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening."

"A goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographical Society could not mend."