Holmes.............

Faithful readers will understand that this blog has lately been indulging in an appreciation for some of our more noteworthy Judges and Justices.  For better or worse, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. has long been a favorite.  At some point there will be more posts about his great dissents.  For today, enjoy a few Holmes quotes that did not actually come from judicial proceedings:


Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.


Certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.


I happen to prefer champagne to ditchwater, but there is no reason to suppose that the cosmos does.


I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy — I don't disparage envy but I don't accept it as legitimately my master.


With all humility, I think, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." Infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one's neighbor as one's self. If you want to hit a bird on the wing, you must have all your will in focus, you must not be thinking about yourself, and equally, you must not be thinking about your neighbor: you must be living in your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing.


One of the eternal conflicts out of which life is made up is that between the effort of every man to get the most he can for his services, and that of society, disguised under the name of capital, to get his services for the least possible return.


Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.


Life is a roar of bargain and battle, but in the very heart of it there rises a mystic spiritual tone that gives meaning to the whole. It transmutes the dull details into romance. It reminds is that our only but wholly adequate significance is as parts of the unimaginable whole. It suggests that even while living we are living to ends outside ourselves.


Life is action, the use of one's powers. As to use them to their height is our joy and duty, so it is the one end that justifies itself.


Young man, the secret of my success is that at an early age I discovered that I was not God.


If I were dying, my last words would be, Have faith and pursue the unknown end.