A new and valid idea is worth more than a regiment and fewer men can furnish the former than command the latter.

I dare say that I have worked off my fundamental formula on you that the chief end of man is to frame general propositions and that no general proposition is worth a damn.

The greatest act of faith is when a man understands he is not God.

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

The wind blows out, the bubble dies; The spring entomb'd in autumn lies; The dew dries up; the star is shot; The flight is past, and man forgot.

I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country.

You hear that boy laughing?you think he's all fun; But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done; The children laugh loud as they troop to his call, And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all.