Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Quotations

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.

We do not quit playing because we grow old, we grow old because we quit playing.

Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.

A great calamity is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened.

Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us.

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.

I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions - adding that no general proposition is worth a damn.

I like children; I like 'em, and I respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by them.