Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Life Quotations

Every calling is great when greatly pursued.

A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.

Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it.

On the whole, I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirms the worth of life as an end in itself, as against the saints who deny it.

I despise making the most of one's time. Half of the pleasures of life consist of the opportunities one has neglected.

[The Constitution] is an experiment as all life is an experiment.

We are all sentenced to capital punishment for the crime of living, and though the condemned cell of our earthly existence is but a narrow and bare dwelling-place, we have adjusted ourselves to it, and made it tolerably comfortable for the little while we are to be confined in it.

Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one.

As for the excellent little wretches who grow up in what they are taught, with never a scruple or a query, ... they signify nothing in the intellectual life of the race.

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.

To us who remain behind is left this day of memories. Every year--in the full tide of spring, at the height of the symphony of flowers and love and life--there comes a pause, and through the silence we hear the lonely pipe of death.

The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.