Apologizing - a very desperate habit - one that is rarely cured. Apology is only egotism wrong side out.

A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.

Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned.

Under bad manners, as under graver faults, lies very commonly an overestimate of our special individuality, as distinguished from our generic humanity.

The common law is not a brooding omnipresence in the sky, but the articulate voice of some sovereign or quasi sovereign that can be identified; although some decisions with which I have disagreed seem to me to have forgotten the fact.

Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end.

For my part I think it is a less evil that some criminals should escape, than that the government should play an ignoble part.