Lawyers spend their professional careers shoveling smoke.

There is one gratification an old author can afford a certain class of critics; that namely, of comparing him as he is with what he was. It is a pleasure to mediocrity to have its superiors brought within range.

It seems to me that at this time we need education in the obvious more than investigation of the obscure.

There is nothing like the dead cold hand of the past to take down our tumid egotism and lead us into the solemn flow of the life of our race.

Life, not the parson, teaches conduct.

The joy of life is to put out one's power in some natural and useful or harmless way. There is no other. And the real misery is not to do this.

The language of judicial decision is mainly the language of logic. And the logical method and form flatter that longing for certainty and for repose which is in every human mind. But certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.