Holmes, Oliver Wendell Sr.

US author, physician, and poet

wrote essay collection "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table" 1857, poems "Old Ironsides", "The Chambered Nautilus", "The Deacon's Masterpiece, or, the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay"

father of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

• "I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving--we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it -- but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor."
• "A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains it original dimension."
• "Life is action and passion; therefore, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of the time, at peril of being judged not to have lived."
• "Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts."
• "To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old."