“I have done almost enough of this work; too much, some of my friends…” — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

“I have done almost enough of this work; too much, some of my friends will say, perhaps. But it has been as much from good nature as anything else.”

Acknowledging that his prolific occasional verse was partly the result of kindness to others · Letter to James Russell Lowell, August 3, 1865

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

About Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

29 August 1809–7 October 1894

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., born 29 August 1809 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and dead 7 October 1894 in Boston, was one of the most recognizably versatile figures in nineteenth-century American culture: physician, medical reformer, anatomist, professor, poet, novelist, essayist, conversational satirist, and public…

More by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.