If you don't know what you want, you will probably never get it.

I know of no teachers so powerful and persuasive as the little army of specialists. They carry no banners, they beat no drums; but where they are men learn that bustle and push are not the equals of quiet genius and serene mastery.

The noblest service comes from nameless hands; and the best servant does his work unseen.

The thing I want to do is put as many new ideas into the law as I can, to show how particular solutions involve general theory, and to do it with style. I should like to be admitted to be the greatest jurist in the world.

Nothing can be so perfect while we possess it as it will seem when remembered.

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

One of the eternal conflicts out of which life is made up is that between the effort of every man to get the most he can for his services, and that of society, disguised under the name of capital, to get his services for the least possible return.