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Oliver Wendell Holmes On "Woman"

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edited 8/19/11

A professor of medicine at Harvard, Holmes gained considerable popularity through his witty, urbane essays and through his poems, many of which are still widely read. His unsuccessful fiction has recently been recognized as a significant contribution to the development of the American psychological novel. He also gained considerable renown as a physiologist.

Holmes was most sympathetic toward women. He felt that their treatment as the virtual property of their husbands was a profound injustice. He was happily married and relished the role of pater familias as well as the company of intellectual women whom he admired for their courage and for whom he felt a certain pity.

His son, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., became a famous Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

OWHolmes

Oliver Wendell Holmes (l809-l894) -- American essayist, scholar, and scientist who was one of the most highly regarded of 19th Century American poets


Better too few words, from the woman we love, than too many: while she is silent, Nature is working for her; while she talks, she is working for herself.|
-- The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

Love is sparingly soluble in the words of men; therefore they speak much of it; but one syllable of woman’s speech can dissolve more of it [love] than a man’s heart can hold.
-- The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

Each woman virtually summons every man to show cause why he doth not love her.
-- The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

Fit the same intellect to a man and it is a bow-string -- to a woman and it is a harp-string. She is vibratile and resonant all over, so she stirs with slighter musical tremblings of the air about her.
-- The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

Women . . . need faith to support them more than men do, for they have a great deal less to call them out of themselves, and it comes easier to them, for their habitual state of dependence teaches them to trust in others.
-- The Poet at the Breakfast-Table

A woman fascinates a man quite as often by what she overlooks as by what she sees.
-- The Professor at the Breakfast-Table

Nature is in earnest when she makes a woman.
-- The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

The woman who “calc’lates” is lost.
-- The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

“I love you” is all the secret that many, nay most women have to tell. When that is said, they are like Chinacrackers on the morning of the fifth of July.
-- The Professor at the Breakfast-Table

Women. Their love first inspires the poet, and their praise is his best reward.
-- The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

Man has his will -- but woman has her way!
-- The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table

 


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