Frases de Oliver Wendell Holmes

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“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.”

“Faith loves to lean on time's destroying arm,
And age, like distance, lends a double charm.”

“For there we loved, and where we love is home,
Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts,
Though o'er us shine the jasper-lighted dome
The chain may lengthen, but it never parts!”

“Those kind friends who suggest to a person suffering from a tedious complaint, that he "Had better try Homoeopathy," are apt to enforce their suggestion by adding, that "at any rate it can do no harm." This may or may not be true as regards the individual. But it always does very great harm to the community to encourage ignorance, error, or deception in a profession which deals with the life and health of our fellow-creatures.”

“Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used, till they are seasoned.”

“What are the great faults of conversation? Want of ideas, want of words, want of manners, are the principal ones, I suppose you think. I don't doubt it, but I will tell you what I have found spoil more good talks than anything else;—long arguments on special points between people who differ on the fundamental principles upon which these points depend. No men can have satisfactory relations with each other until they have agreed on certain ultimata [finalities] of belief not to be disturbed in ordinary conversation, and unless they have sense enough to trace the secondary questions depending upon these ultimate beliefs to their source. In short, just as a written constitution is essential to the best social order, so a code of finalities is a necessary condition of profitable talk between two persons.”

“But to radiate the heat of the affections into a clod, which absorbs all that is poured into it, but never warms beneath the sunshine of smiles or the pressure of hand or lip,—this is the great martyrdom of sensitive beings,—most of all in that perpetual auto da fé where young womanhood is the sacrifice.”

“I would never use a long word, even, where a short one would answer the purpose. I know there are professors in this country who 'ligate' arteries. Other surgeons only tie them, and it stops the bleeding just as well.”

“I don't want to have the territory of a man's mind fenced in. I don't want to shut out the mystery of the stars and the awful hollow that holds them. We have done with those hypaethral temples, that were open above to the heavens, but we can have attics and skylights to them. Minds with skylights…
One-story intellects, two-story intellects, three-story intellects, with skylights. All fact-collectors, who have no aim beyond their facts, are one-story men. Two-story men compare, reason, generalize, using the labors of the fact-collectors as well as their own. Three-story men idealize, imagine, predict; their best illumination comes from above, through the skylight. There are minds with large ground floors, that can store an infinite amount of knowledge; some librarians, for instance, who know enough of books to help other people, without being able to make much other use of their knowledge, have intellects of this class. Your great working lawyer has two spacious stories; his mind is clear, because his mental floors are large, and he has room to arrange his thoughts so that he can get at them,—facts below, principles above, and all in ordered series; poets are often narrow below, incapable of clear statement, and with small power of consecutive reasoning, but full of light, if sometimes rather bare of furniture in the attics.”

“So long as the body is affected through the mind, no audacious device, even of the most manifestly dishonest character, can fail of producing occasional good to those who yield it an implicit or even a partial faith. The argument founded on this occasional good would be as applicable in justifying the counterfeiter and giving circulation to his base coin, on the ground that a spurious dollar had often relieved a poor man's necessities.”

“Even in common people, conceit has the virtue of making them cheerful; the man who thinks his wife, his baby, his house, his horse, his dog, and himself severally unequalled, is almost sure to be a good-humored person, though liable to be tedious at times.”

“God reigneth. All is well.”

“One could never remember himself in eternity by the mere fact of having loved or hated any more than by that of having thirsted; love and hate have no more individuality in them than single waves in the ocean;—but the accidents or trivial marks which distinguished those whom we loved or hated make their memory our own forever, and with it that of our own personality also.”

“Time, time only, can gradually wean us from our Epeolatry, or word-worship, by spiritualizing our ideas of the thing signified.”

“Little I ask, my wants are few;
I only wish a hut of stone,
(A very plain brown stone will do,)
That I may call my own;—
And close at hand is such a one,
In yonder street that fronts the sun.”

“If we are only as the potter's clay
Made to be fashioned as the artist wills,
And broken into shards if we offend
The eye of Him who made us, it is well.”

“It went to pieces all at once—
All at once and nothing first,
Just as bubbles do when they burst.”

“Everybody likes and respects self-made men. It is a great deal better to be made in that way than not to be made at all.”

“You think they are crusaders sent
From some infernal clime,
To pluck the eyes of sentiment
And dock the tail of Rhyme,
To crack the voice of Melody
And break the legs of Time.”

“We are very shy of asking questions of those who know enough to destroy with one word the hopes we live on.”

“Thou say’st an undisputed thing
In such a solemn way.”

“I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it,—but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.”

“The great delusion of mankind is in supposing that to be individual and exceptional which is universal and according to law.”

“The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the center of each and every town or city.”

“Mark this which I am going to say once for all: If I had not force enough to project a principle full in the face of the half dozen most obvious facts which seem to contradict it, I would think only in single file from this day forward.”

“On Thee we fling our burdening woe,
O love Divine, forever dear:
Content to suffer, while we know,
Living and dying, Thou art near!”

“Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power; that is all.”

“The hat is the ultimum moriens of "respectability."”

“You may set it down as a truth which admits of few exceptions, that those who ask your opinion really want your praise, and will be contented with nothing less.”

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