Frases de Oliver Wendell Holmes

página 2

“A grandeza não é onde permanecemos, mas em qual direção estamos nos movendo. Devemos navegar algumas vezes com o vento e outras vezes contra ele, mas devemos navegar, e não ficar à deriva, e nem ancorados.”

“Nós não paramos de brincar porque envelhecemos, mas envelhecemos porque paramos de brincar.”

“A verdade é que a medicina, teoricamente fundada na observação, é tão sensível às influências políticas, religiosas, filosóficas e da imaginação como o barômetro é sensível às mudanças atmosféricas.”

“Devemos navegar algumas vezes a favor do vento e outras contra ele - mas temos de navegar sempre, e não nos deixar levar pelo vento, nem jogar a âncora.”

“Eu não daria um centavo pela simplicidade que há deste lado da complexidade, mas daria minha vida pela simplicidade que existe do outro lado da complexidade.”

“A amizade está longe de autorizar que se digam coisas desagradáveis aos amigos íntimos.”

“O correlato de amar nossos vizinhos como a nós é odiar a nós como odiamos os vizinhos.”

“A poesia verdadeira, a melhor, não passa de cinzas de uma paixão que se consumiu.”

“Sem termos consciência de estar usando máscaras, temos uma cara específica para cada amigo.”

“O mais importante na vida não é a situação em que nos encontramos, mas a direcção para a qual nos movemos.”

“É característica do chato que ele é a última pessoa a saber disso.”

“A grande coisa neste mundo não é saber onde estamos, mas para que direção estamos indo.”

“Quando o cérebro humano se distende para abrigar uma ideia nova, nunca mais volta à dimensão anterior.”

“Nada é tão comum como o desejo de ser excepcional.”

“A fama é girassol sem perfume, com pomposa coroa de ouro, mas amizade é rosa viva que exala doce perfume em cada pétala.”

“Muitas vezes um pensamento continua a ser original, mesmo depois de ter sido proferido uma centena de vezes.”

“Muitas pessoas morrem com sua música ainda nelas. Muitas vezes é porque elas sempre estão preparadas para viver… Antes delas saberem disso… o tempo acaba.”

“A mente de um fanático é como a pupila do olho: quanto mais luz incide sobre ela, mais se irá contrair.”

“Muitas ideias crescem melhor se plantadas noutro cérebro do que no cérebro que lhes deu origem.”

“A verdadeira religião do mundo vem das mulheres muito mais que dos homens, das mães acima de tudo, que carregam a chave de nossas almas em seus seios.”

“Os impostos são aquilo que se paga para se ter uma sociedade civilizada.”

“A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them;
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!”

“Leverage is everything,—was what I used to say;—don't begin to pry till you have got the long arm on your side.”

“Thine eye was on the censer,
And not the hand that bore it.”

“Now habit is a labor-saving invention which enables a man to get along with less fuel,—that is all; for fuel is force.”

“There is that glorious Epicurean paradox uttered by my friend the Historian, in one of his flashing moments: "Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries." To this must certainly be added that other saying of one of the wittiest of men: "Good Americans when they die go to Paris."”

“Good to the heels the well-worn slipper feels
When the tired player shuffles off the buskin;
A page of Hood may do a fellow good
After a scolding from Carlyle or Ruskin.”

“Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!”

“Wake in our breast the living fires,
The holy faith that warmed our sires;
Thy hand hath made our nation free;
To die for her is serving Thee.”

“I say that conceit is just as natural a thing to human minds as a centre is to a circle. But little-minded people's thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes' conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve. An arc in the movement of a large intellect does not sensibly differ from a straight line. Even if it have the third vowel ['I', the first-person pronoun] as its centre, it does not soon betray it. The highest thought, that is, is the most seemingly impersonal; it does not obviously imply any individual centre.”

“Then the white man hates him [the Native American], and hunts him down like the wild beasts of the forest, and so the red-crayon sketch is rubbed out, and the canvas is ready for a picture of manhood a little more like God's own image.”

“And silence, like a poultice, comes
To heal the blows of sound.”

“One unquestioned text we read,
All doubt beyond, all fear above;
Nor crackling pile nor cursing creed
Can burn or blot it—God is love.”

“I once inhaled a pretty full dose of ether, with the determination to put on record, at the earliest moment of regaining consciousness, the thought I should find uppermost in my mind. The mighty music of the triumphal march into nothingness reverberated through my brain, and filled me with a sense of infinite possibilities, which made me an archangel for the moment. The veil of eternity was lifted. The one great truth which underlies all human experience, and is the key to all the mysteries that philosophy has sought in vain to solve, flashed upon me in a sudden revelation. Henceforth all was clear: a few words had lifted my intelligence to the level of the knowledge of the cherubim. As my natural condition returned, I remembered my resolution; and, staggering to my desk, I wrote, in ill-shaped straggling letters, the all-embracing truth still glimmering in my consciousness. The words were these (children may smile; the wise will ponder): “A strong smell of turpentine prevails throughout.””

“Grant us Thy truth to make us free,
And kindling hearts that burn for Thee,
Till all Thy living altars claim
One holy light, one heavenly flame.”

“How many have withered and wasted under as slow a torment in the walls of that larger Inquisition which we call Civilization!”

“Did I not say to you a little while ago that the universe swam in an ocean of similitudes and analogies?”

“All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called “facts.” They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.”

“A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.”

“I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!”

“Speak not too well of one who scarce will know
Himself transfigured in its roseate glow;
Say kindly of him what is, chiefly, true,
Remembering always he belongs to you;
Deal with him as a truant, if you will,
But claim him, keep him, call him brother still!”

“And when you stick on conversation’s burrs,
Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful urs.”

“You know well enough what I mean by youth and age;—something in the soul, which has no more to do with the color of the hair than the vein of gold in a rock has to do with the grass a thousand feet above it.”

“Memory is a net; one finds it full of fish when he takes it from the brook; but a dozen miles of water have run through it without sticking.”

“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.”

“When the last reader reads no more.”

“The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.”

“And since, I never dare to write
As funny as I can.”

“The men of facts wait their turn in grim silence, with that slight tension about the nostrils which the consciousness of carrying a "settler" in the form of a fact or a revolver gives the individual thus armed.”

“When lawyers take what they would give
And doctors give what they would take.”