“To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor.”
More from Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. on Life
“Trouble makes us one with every human being in the world - and unless we touch others, we're out of touch with life.”
“The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are going.”
“To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.”
“A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.”
“Share the passion and action of your time at peril of being judged not to have lived.”
“Life is an end in itself and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it.”
Others on Life
Jonathan Safran Foer
22 quotes“One hundred years of joy can be erased in one second”
Mitch Albom
18 quotes“Behind all your stories is always your mother's story. Because hers is where yours begin.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
16 quotes“I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.”
Henry Miller
15 quotes“We create our fate every day ... most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.”
Lord Byron
14 quotes“The great art of life is sensation to feel that we exist even in pain.”
Cormac McCarthy
14 quotes“People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn't believe in that. Tomorrow wasn't getting ready for them. It didn...”
Virginia Woolf
14 quotes“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”
Joseph Campbell
14 quotes“I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive...”
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
13 quotes“Most of us have the good or bad fortune of seeing our lives fall apart so slowly we barely notice.”
Søren Kierkegaard
13 quotes“Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards.”
Margaret Atwood
13 quotes“Surviving Is the only warWe can afford”
Sarah Dessen
13 quotes“All those clean, fresh starts had made me forget what it was like, until now, to be messy and honest and out of control....”