Quotes from Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

The individual will always be a minority. If a man is in a minority of one, we lock him up.

The life of the law has not been logic but experience.

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.

The world has to learn that the actual pleasure derived from material things is of rather low quality on the whole and less even in quantity than it looks to those who have not tried it.

There are one-story intellects, two-story intellects, and three-story intellects with skylights. All fact collectors with no aim beyond their facts are one-story men. Two-story men compare reason and generalize, using labors of the fact collectors as well as their own. Three-story men idealize, imagine, and predict. Their best illuminations come from above through the skylight.

There's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know, but a tree and truth.

To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old.

To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad.