Frases de Oliver Wendell Holmes

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“Ningún amor es más verdadero que aquel que muere sin haber sido revelado.”

“Los seres humanos no dejan de jugar porque envejecen; envejecen porque dejan de jugar.”

“El mayor acto de fe es cuando un hombre decide que él no es Dios.”

“A veces navegamos con el viento, a veces en contra, pero debemos navegar, no estar a la deriva, ni echar el ancla.”

“Todo lo que puedo decir de la lógica es que es lógica.”

“El joven conoce las reglas, pero el viejo las excepciones.”

“No pongas tu interés en el dinero, pero pon tu dinero al interés.”

“El Derecho es vida, y la vida cambia.”

“La ciencia es un magnífico mobiliario para el piso superior de un hombre, siempre y cuando su sentido común esté en la planta baja.”

“El Derecho se ha de poner siempre en el lugar del criminal, si no, no es derecho.”

“El ruido de un beso no es tan retumbante como el de un cañón, pero su eco dura mucho más.”

“Toda lengua es un templo en el que está encerrada el alma del que habla.”

“La fama suele alcanzar a aquellos que están pensando en otra cosa.”

“Los impuestos son el precio de vivir en una sociedad 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.”