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

— Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872), Ch. 5

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.”

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

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

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

“It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?”

“In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.”

“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces.”

“That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.”

“Always take the short cut; and that is the rational one. Therefore say and do everything according to soundest reason.”