Quote of the Day (Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., on ‘Knowledge and Timber’)

“Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned.”— American physician, teacher, and author Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809-1894), The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858)

Quote of the Day (Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., on Fame vs. Notoriety)

“You long to ‘leap at a single bound into celebrity.’ Nothing is so commonplace as to wish to be remarkable. Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else,—very rarely to those who say to themselves, ‘Go to, now, let us be a celebrated individual!’ The struggle for fame, as such, commonly ends in notoriety;—that ladder is easy to climb, but it leads to the pillory which is crowded with fools who could not hold their tongues and rogues who could not hide their tricks.” — American physician, teacher, and author Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809-1894), The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858)

Quote of the Day (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., on ‘Laughter and Tears’)

“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.” —New England physician, poet and essayist Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894), The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Quote of the Day (Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., on the Plight of a Bibliophile)

“What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred?”—Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Over the Teacups (1891)