Turning Phrases
Bill Long 10/23/05
Ten from OW Holmes, Jr.'s Occasional Speeches
Jesus's sentiment would have been more accurate to life if he had said: "Man does not live by bread alone; he needs cliches." Or, to put it in more elegant speech, "The language of a well-turned phrase is the language of life." Holmes excelled as a literary stylist, capturing the pulsating essence of life in well-framed phrases and clauses. One of the reasons he is remembered in 2005 is that people are familiar with his quotations: "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." "The life of law has not been logic but experience." "The Constitution doesn't enshrine Mr. Spencer's Social Statics." But it was only when I turned to his occasional speechees and addresses that I saw some of the scope of his liteary prowess. Many of the following are worthy of memorization at the least the encouragement to develop our own "phrases to live by." The purpose of this essay is to give some of these phrases in context.
A Sample of Holmes
1. In talking about the contrast between his early life in Boston, where few if any statues graced the streets, and 1902, when there were many: "I then learned what I have never doubted since that bad statues are better than no statues" (151). Even bad statues give you something to think about...
2. In his radio address to the nation on the occasion of his 90th birthday (March 8, 1931): "There is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill" (178). He was speaking of a horse after finishing a race. The reference to himself and others who have "finished the race" is evident--but yet he still has a "canter" left in him.
3. During his 71st year, in an address at the Fiftieth Anniversary of Graduation from Harvard (June 28, 1911): "One learns from time an amiable latitude with regard to beliefs and tastes" (161). I think this really sums up my observations, at least with respect to my friends as I age. Age may bring certain physical or even mental limitations, but it normally also brings a deeper understanding of, and sympathy for, divergent opinions.
4. Describing the death of William C. Endicott, of the generation preceding Holmes, in November 1900, when Holmes was 59: "It is November and the last leaves are falling that once screened my generation from the sky" (127). A wonderful comment on the passing of time.
5. And, in a use of "unman" that certainly isn't fashionable today, Holmes said: "The kindness of this reception almost unmans me, and it shakes me the more when taken with a kind of seriousness which the moment has for me" (122).
6. The next sentence of that pregnant address by the unmanned man (to the Bar Association of Boston--March 7, 1900) runs as follows: "As with a drowning man, the past is telescoped into a minute, and the stages are all here at once in my mind" (122). We are familiar with the commonplace that the reality of a person's impending execution has a wonderful ability to focus the mind; I like Holmes' statement better.
7. He quotes Malebranche, but since no one knows who Malebranche is today, we are grateful to Holmes for bringing him to our attention. It is: "It was of this [i.e., thinking about the 'end' or 'goal' of life] that Malebranche was thinking when he said that, if God held in one hand truth, and in the other the pursuit of truth, he would say: 'Lord, the truth is for thee alone; give me the pursuit'" (124-25).
8. Speaking at the opening of Northwestern Law School in 1902, and thinking about the relationship of "genius" and "hard work," Holmes said, "Mr. Ruskin's first rule for learning to draw, you will remember, was, Be born with genius" (142). On the one hand, it is like the advice that says that in order to live a happy life you need to choose your parents wisely but, on the other hand, it is an arresting way to stress that we ought not to abandon, ignore or downplay our native enduements as we think about our capacities.
9. Two quotations following in rapid succession from his 50th Anniversary Graduation speech are the following. "Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum" (161). We often speak about how things do or do not "add up" for us, but maybe the reason that they don't is that we are using the wrong metaphor. I have an artist friend, a most beautiful person, whose "amiable latitude" (see quotation 3) has enabled me to see much further in life than before I met her. She knows that life is like painting a picture; she has internalized Holmes without really studying him. Then Holmes says, "As twenty men of genius looking out of the same window will pain twenty canvases, each unlike all the others, and every one great, so, one comes to think, MEN MAY BE PARDONED FOR THE DEFECTS OF THEIR QUALITIES IF THE HAVE THE QUALITIES OF THEIR DEFECTS" (161). Almost Shakespearean here (from Measure for Measure).
10. Finally, in commemorating the 100th anniversary of John Marshall's ascending to the Chief Justiceship of the United States Supreme Court (Feb. 4, 1901), he speaks of how removing very small things from a great man reduces him to normalcy or even ineffectiveness ("Remove a square inch of mucous membrane, and the tenor will sing no more," 132): "A great man represents a great ganglion in the nerves of society, or, to vary the figure, a strategic point in the campaign of history.." (132).
What a feast of words and thoughts. Enough for one day, don't you agree?
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