Oliver Wendell Holmes

There is no friend like the old friend who has shared our morning days, No greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise; Fame is the scentless sunflower, with gaudy crown of gold; But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.

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.

These are the hands whose sturdy labor brings The peasant's food, the golden pomp of kings; This is the page whose letters shall be seen, Changed by the sun to words of living green; This is the scholar whose immortal pen Spells the first lesson hunger taught to men; These are the lines that heaven-commanded Toil Shows on his deed, - the charter of the soil!

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. It has come to you over a new route, by a new and express train of association.

Thou say'st an undisputed thing In such a solemn way.

Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The lightning and the gale!

There is a little plant called reverence in the corner of my soul's garden, which I love to have watered once a week.

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor.

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

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!