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Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. on Birthday

1809–1894 United States

← All quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

5 quotes

To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.

Fame is the scentless sunflower, with gaudy crown of gold;
But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.

Old age is like an opium-dream. Nothing seems real except what is unreal.

You hear that boy laughing?—you think he’s all fun;
But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done;
The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,
And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all.

The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859)

Old Tune, in whose banks we deposit our notes,
Is a miser who always wants guineas for groats;
He keeps all his customers still in arrears
By lending them minutes and charging them years.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.