The men of facts wait their turn in grim silence, with that slight tension about the nostrils which the consciousness of carrying a "settler" in the … - Oliver Wendell Holmes

" "

The men of facts wait their turn in grim silence, with that slight tension about the nostrils which the consciousness of carrying a "settler" in the form of a fact or a revolver gives the individual thus armed.

English
Collect this quote

About Oliver Wendell Holmes

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (29 August 1809 – 8 October 1894) was an American physician, writer, poet, and the father of US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Try QuoteGPT

Chat naturally about what you need. Each answer links back to real quotes with citations.

Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.

Additional quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Limited Time Offer

Premium members can get their quote collection automatically imported into their Quotewise collections.

I don't want to have the territory of a man's mind fenced in. I don't want to shut out the mystery of the stars and the awful hollow that holds them. We have done with those hypaethral temples, that were open above to the heavens, but we can have attics and skylights to them. Minds with skylights...
One-story intellects, two-story intellects, three-story intellects, with skylights. All fact-collectors, who have no aim beyond their facts, are one-story men. Two-story men compare, reason, generalize, using the labors of the fact-collectors as well as their own. Three-story men idealize, imagine, predict; their best illumination comes from above, through the skylight. There are minds with large ground floors, that can store an infinite amount of knowledge; some librarians, for instance, who know enough of books to help other people, without being able to make much other use of their knowledge, have intellects of this class. Your great working lawyer has two spacious stories; his mind is clear, because his mental floors are large, and he has room to arrange his thoughts so that he can get at them,—facts below, principles above, and all in ordered series; poets are often narrow below, incapable of clear statement, and with small power of consecutive reasoning, but full of light, if sometimes rather bare of furniture in the attics.

Loading...