“Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.”

The risk to be percieved defines the duty to be obeyed.

The great tides and currents which engulf the rest of men do not turn aside in their course and pass the judges by.

Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.

Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior.

Fraud includes the pretense of knowledge when knowledge there is none.

The great ideals of liberty and equality are preserved against the assaults of opportunism, the expediency of the passing hour, the erosion of small encroachments, the scorn and derision of those who have no patience with general principles.

Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.

No judicial system could do society’s work if each issue had to be decided afresh in every case which raised it.

In truth, I am nothing but a plodding mediocrity – please observe, a plodding mediocrity – for a mere mediocrity does not go very far, but a plodding one gets quite a distance. There is joy in that success, and a distinction can come from courage, fidelity and industry.

The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet.

History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.

The judge is not the knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness.

Membership in the bar is a privilege burdened with conditions.

What has once been settled by a precedent will not be unsettled overnight, for certainty and uniformity are gains not lightly sacrificed. Above all is this true when honest men have shaped their conduct on the faith of the pronouncement.

Opinion has a significance proportioned to the sources that sustain it.

History or custom or social utility or some compelling sense of justice or sometimes perhaps a semi-intuitive apprehension of the pervading spirit of our law must come to the rescue of the anxious judge and tell him where to go.

Being points beyond itself. Accustomed to think in terms of space, the expression “being points beyond itself” may be taken to denote a higher point in space.

First steps are always the hardest but until they are taken the notion of progress remains only a notion and not an achievement.

People say that slaves were taken from Africa. This is not true:

The heart is long, very long in receiving the convictions that is forced upon it by reason… affection still lingers in the Bosom, even after esteem has taken its flight.

I’ve taken it from feminist friends, and I’ve taken it from lefty friends too. But that reassures me. If the right is attacking us and the left is attacking us, that’s exactly where we want to be.

Whereas the insufficiency of a love neither sustained nor supreme cannot be ignored, the same should not be taken as cause to avoid one’s total spiritual contractual engagement to this world.

The fact is that comedy is actually too serious to be taken seriously.

Do not be fooled by your youthful appearance for very soon it would be taken away from you.