There is no better way to exercise the imagination than the study of the law.

So each man, like each plant, has his parasites. A strong, astringent, bilious nature has more truculent enemies than the slugs and moths that fret my leaves. Such a one has curculios, borers, knife-worms; a swindler ate him first, then a client, then a quack, then smooth, plausible gentlemen, bitter and selfish as Moloch.

In politics and in trade, bruisers and pirates are of better promise than talkers and clerks.

Be a football to Time and Chance, the more kicks, the better, so that you inspect the whole game and know its utmost law.

The action of the soul is oftener in that which is felt and left unsaid than in that which is said in any conversation. It broods over every society, and men unconsciously seek for it in each other.

Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom.

No picture of life can have any veracity that does not admit the odious facts. A man's power is hooped in by a necessity, which, by many experiments, he touches on every side, until he learns its arc.