Oliver Wendell Holmes citáty
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Datum narození: 29. srpen 1809
Datum úmrtí: 7. říjen 1894
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (29. srpna 1809 v Cambridge, Massachusetts – 7. října 1894 v Cambridge, Massachusetts) byl lékař, ale proslavil se především jako spisovatel a básník. Je považován za jednoho z nejlepších amerických básníků 19. století.
Citáty Oliver Wendell Holmes
„Muž má svou vůli, ale žena svou metodu.“
Varianta: Muž má svou vůli - ale žena má svou metodu.
„Treat bad men exactly as if they were insane.“
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, kniha Elsie Venner
Elsie Venner (1859)
Kontext: I do not know in what shape the practical question may present itself to you; but I will tell you my rule in life, and I think you will find it a good one. Treat bad men exactly as if they were insane. They are in-sane, out of health, morally. Reason, which is food to sound minds, is not tolerated, still less assimilated, unless administered with the greatest caution; perhaps, not at all. Avoid collision with them, so far as you honorably can; keep your temper, if you can,—for one angry man is as good as another; restrain them from violence, promptly, completely, and with the least possible injury, just as in the case of maniacs,—and when you have got rid of them, or got them tied hand and foot so that they can do no mischief, sit down and contemplate them charitably...
„A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.“
Zdroj: The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859), Ch. X.
Kontext: Poets are never young, in one sense. Their delicate ear hears the far-off whispers of eternity, which coarser souls must travel towards for scores of years before their dull sense is touched by them. A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
„A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. It has come to you over a new route, by a new and express train of associations.“
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Kontext: He must be a poor creature that does not often repeat himself. Imagine the author of the excellent piece of advice, "Know thyself," never alluding to that sentiment again during the course of a protracted existence! Why, the truths a man carries about with him are his tools; and do you think a carpenter is bound to use the same plane but once to smooth a knotty board with, or to hang up his hammer after it has driven its first nail? I shall never repeat a conversation, but an idea often. I shall use the same types when I like, but not commonly the same stereotypes. A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. It has come to you over a new route, by a new and express train of associations.
„We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible.“
The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872)
Kontext: We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were early implanted in his imagination; no matter how utterly his reason may reject them, he will still feel as the famous woman did about ghosts, Je n'y crois pas, mais je les crains,—"I don't believe in them, but I am afraid of them, nevertheless".
„Death only grasps; to live is to pursue, —
Dream on! there 's nothing but illusion true!“
"The Old Player" (1861), in Songs in Many Keys (1862).
Kontext: Dream on! Though Heaven may woo our open eyes,
Through their closed lids we look on fairer skies;
Truth is for other worlds, and hope for this;
The cheating future lends the present's bliss;
Life is a running shade, with fettered hands,
That chases phantoms over shifting sands;
Death a still spectre on a marble seat,
With ever clutching palms and shackled feet;
The airy shapes that mock life's slender chain,
The flying joys he strives to clasp in vain,
Death only grasps; to live is to pursue, —
Dream on! there 's nothing but illusion true!
„It will take you a hundred or two more years to get decently humanized, after so many centuries of de-humanizing celibacy.“
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, kniha Elsie Venner
Elsie Venner (1859)
Kontext: You inherit your notions from a set of priests that had no wives and no children, or none to speak of, and so let their humanity die out of them. It didn't seem much to them to condemn a few thousand millions of people to purgatory or worse for a mistake of judgment. They didn't know what it was to have a child look up in their faces and say 'Father!' It will take you a hundred or two more years to get decently humanized, after so many centuries of de-humanizing celibacy.
„The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men, — from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms.“
Zdroj: The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859), Ch. V.
Kontext: The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men, — from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms. It is in their hearts that the "sentimental" religion some people are so fond of sneering at has its source. The sentiment of love, the sentiment of maternity, the sentiment of the paramount obligation of the parent to the child as having called it into existence, enhanced just in proportion to the power and knowledge of the one and the weakness and ignorance of the other, — these are the "sentiments" that have kept our soulless systems from driving men off to die in holes like those that riddle the sides of the hill opposite the Monastery of St. Saba, where the miserable victims of a falsely-interpreted religion starved and withered in their delusion.
