Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you don't make it of wood, you must make it of words.

It takes me several days, after I get back to Boston, to realize that the reference "the president" refers to the president of Harvard and not to a minor official in Washington.

The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power. The prize of the general is not a bigger tent, but command.

There is in all men a demand for the superlative, so much so that the poor devil that has no other way of reaching it attains it by getting drunk.

Certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.

The law is the witness and external deposit of our moral life. Its history is the history of the moral development of the race.

What I wouldn't give to be seventy again!