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| JR. or SR. ??? A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve. All life is action and passion, it is required of man that he should share the passion and action of his time, at peril of being judged not to have lived. For my heart I think it a less evil that some criminals should escape than that the government should play an ignoble part. I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving--we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it--but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor. The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts but learning how to make facts live. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. Where we love is home. Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts. JR. A page of history is worth a volume of logic. A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used. Every calling is great when greatly pursued. If a man is in a minority of one, we lock him up. This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice. To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man. When I want to understand what is happening today or try to decide what will happen tomorrow, I look back. SR. (1809-1894) Death tugs at my ear and says: "Live, I am coming." |
| OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES |
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