The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience... The…

But as precedents survive like the clavicle in the cat, long after the use they once served is at an end, and the reason for them has been forgotten, the result of following them must often be failure and confusion from the merely logical …

It is the merit of the common law that it decides the case first and determines the principle afterwards.

State interference is an evil, where it cannot be shown to be a good.

There are not infrequent times when a bottle of wine, a good dinner, a girl of some trivial sort can fill the hour for me.

The degree of civilization which a people has reached, no doubt, is marked by their anxiety to do as they would be done by.

It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for the country in return.