More quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

"The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library,'The medicines of the soul."
"The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts."
"Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad."
"It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living."
"When I think of talking, it is of course with a woman. For talking at its best being an inspiration, it wants a corresponding divine quality of receptiveness, and where will you find this but in a woman?"