Quotes from book
Elsie Venner

Name: Elsie Venner
Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes

Elsie Venner: A Romance of Destiny is an 1861 novel by American author and physician Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Later dubbed the first of his "medicated novels", it tells the story of a neurotic young woman whose mother was bitten by a rattlesnake while pregnant, which imbued the child with some characteristics of the reptile.

“Treat bad men exactly as if they were insane.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes book Elsie Venner

Elsie Venner (1859)
Context: I do not know in what shape the practical question may present itself to you; but I will tell you my rule in life, and I think you will find it a good one. Treat bad men exactly as if they were insane. They are in-sane, out of health, morally. Reason, which is food to sound minds, is not tolerated, still less assimilated, unless administered with the greatest caution; perhaps, not at all. Avoid collision with them, so far as you honorably can; keep your temper, if you can,—for one angry man is as good as another; restrain them from violence, promptly, completely, and with the least possible injury, just as in the case of maniacs,—and when you have got rid of them, or got them tied hand and foot so that they can do no mischief, sit down and contemplate them charitably...

“It will take you a hundred or two more years to get decently humanized, after so many centuries of de-humanizing celibacy.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes book Elsie Venner

Elsie Venner (1859)
Context: You inherit your notions from a set of priests that had no wives and no children, or none to speak of, and so let their humanity die out of them. It didn't seem much to them to condemn a few thousand millions of people to purgatory or worse for a mistake of judgment. They didn't know what it was to have a child look up in their faces and say 'Father!' It will take you a hundred or two more years to get decently humanized, after so many centuries of de-humanizing celibacy.

“Leverage is everything,—was what I used to say;—don't begin to pry till you have got the long arm on your side.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes book Elsie Venner

Elsie Venner (1859)

“We are very shy of asking questions of those who know enough to destroy with one word the hopes we live on.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes book Elsie Venner

Elsie Venner (1859)

“What's the use in our caring about hard words after this,—'atheists,' heretics, infidels, and the like? They're, after all, only the cinders picked up out of those heaps of ashes round the stumps of the old stakes where they used to burn men, women, and children for not thinking just like other folks.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes book Elsie Venner

Elsie Venner (1859)

“The Widow Rowens was now in the full bloom of ornamental sorrow.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes book Elsie Venner

Elsie Venner (1859)

“All of us love companionship and sympathy; some of us may love them too much. All of us are more or less imaginative in our theology.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes book Elsie Venner

Elsie Venner (1859)

“What a miserable thing it is to be poor.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes book Elsie Venner

Elsie Venner (1859)

“We forget that weakness is not in itself a sin. We forget that even cowardice may call for our most lenient judgment, if it spring from innate infirmity.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes book Elsie Venner

Elsie Venner (1859)

“There isn't a text in the Bible better worth keeping always in mind than that one, 'Judge not, that ye be not judged.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes book Elsie Venner

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Elsie Venner (1859)

“You inherit your notions from a set of priests that had no wives and no children, or none to speak of, and so let their humanity die out of them.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes book Elsie Venner

“If a man has a genuine, sincere, hearty wish to get rid of his liberty, if he is really bent upon becoming a slave, nothing can stop him.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes book Elsie Venner

Elsie Venner (1859)
Context: If a man has a genuine, sincere, hearty wish to get rid of his liberty, if he is really bent upon becoming a slave, nothing can stop him. And the temptation is to some natures a very great one. Liberty is often a heavy burden on a man. It involves that necessity for perpetual choice which is the kind of labor men have always dreaded. In common life we shirk it by forming habits, which take the place of self-determination. In politics party-organization saves us the pains of much thinking before deciding how to cast our vote.

“Be polite and generous, but don't undervalue yourself.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes book Elsie Venner

Elsie Venner (1859)
Context: Be polite and generous, but don't undervalue yourself. You will be useful, at any rate; you may just as well be happy, while you are about it.