“Beware how you take away hope from any human being.”

— Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Valedictory address to Harvard medical graduates (10 March 1858)

About Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

1809 – 1894

American physician, poet and essayist, author of "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table".

“People that make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks.”

“Deal with him as a truant, if you will, but claim him, keep him, call him brother still!”

“Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.”

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all.”

“Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.”

“There is said to be hope for a sick man, as long as there is life.”

“Change, indeed, is painful; yet ever needful; and if Memory have its force and worth, so also has Hope.”

“Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.”

“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.”