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Home  »  Respectfully Quoted  »  Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–94)

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 135
AUTHOR: Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–94)
QUOTATION: Speak not too well of one who scarce will know
Himself transfigured in its roseate glow;
Say kindly of him what is, chiefly, true,
Remembering always he belongs to you;
Deal with him as a truant, if you will,
But claim him, keep him, call him brother still!
ATTRIBUTION: OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, “Poem,” read at a dinner given for the author by the medical profession of the City of New York, April 12, 1883.—The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, ed. Eleanor M. Tilton, p. 71 (1895, rev. 1975).
SUBJECTS: Brotherhood