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Through Our Great Good Fortune, In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched With Fire. It Was Given To Us To Learn At The Outset That Life Is A Profound And Passionate Thing.

-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

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Through Our Great Good

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

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Through Our Great Good Fortune, In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched With Fire. It Was Given To Us To Learn At The Outset That Life Is A Profound And Passionate Thing.

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More From Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Many Ideas Grow Better When Transplanted Into Another Mind Than In The One Where They Sprung Up.

History Has To Be Rewritten Because History Is The Selection Of Those Threads Of Causes Or Antecedents That We Are Interested In.

The History Of Intellectual Growth And Discovery Clearly Demonstrates The Need For Unfettered Freedom, The Right To Think The Unthinkable, Discuss The Unmentionable, And Challenge The Unchallengeable. To Curtail Free Expression Strikes Twice At Intellectual Freedom, For Whoever Deprives Another Of The Right To State Unpopular Views Necessarily Also Deprives Others Of The Right To Listen To Those Views.

Fame Is The Scentless Sunflower, With Gaudy Crown Of Gold; But Friendship Is The Rose, With Sweets In Every Fold.

The Very Minute A Thought Is Threatened With Publicity It Seems To Shrink Towards Mediocrity.

Where We Stand Is Not As Important As The Direction In Which We Are Moving.

Science ... In Other Words, Knowledge-is Not The Enemy Of Religion; For, If So, Then Religion Would Mean Ignorance. But It Is Often The Antagonist Of School-divinity.

I Think It Not Improbable That Man, Like The Grub That Prepares A Chamber For The Winged Thing It Never Has Seen But Is To Be - That Man May Have Cosmic Destinies That He Does Not Understand.

Any Tax Is A Discouragement And Therefore A Regulation So Far As It Goes.

As For The Excellent Little Wretches Who Grow Up In What They Are Taught, With Never A Scruple Or A Query, ... They Signify Nothing In The Intellectual Life Of The Race.

Every Idea Is An Incitement. It Offers Itself For Belief, And If Believed It Is Acted On Unless Some Other Belief Outweighs It Or Some Failure Of Energy Stifles The Movement At Its Birth. The Only Difference Between The Expression Of An Opinion And An Incitement Is The Speaker's Enthusiasm For The Result.

If I Were Dying, My Last Words Would Be: Have Faith And Pursue The Unknown End.

Certitude Is Not The Test Of Certainty.

Taxes Are What We Pay For Civilized Society

Men Are Idolaters, And Want Something To Look At And Kiss And Hug, Or Throw Themselves Down Before; They Always Did, They Always Will; And If You Don't Make It Of Wood, You Must Make It Of Words.

The Ultimate Good Desired Is Better Reached By Free Trade In Ideas [and] The Best Test Of Truth Is The Power Of The Thought To Get Itself Accepted In The Competition Of The Market.

The Life Of The Law Has Not Been Logic; It Has Been Experience.

It Seems To Me That At This Time We Need Education In The Obvious More Than Investigation Of The Obscure.

Most Of Us Retain Enough Of The Theological Attitude To Think That We Are Little Gods.

Under Bad Manners, As Under Graver Faults, Lies Very Commonly An Overestimate Of Our Special Individuality, As Distinguished From Our Generic Humanity.

If You Don't Know What You Want, You Will Probably Never Get It.

Going With The Flow

You Make Me Chuckle When You Say That You Are No Longer Young, That You Have Turned Twenty-four. A Man Is Or May Be Young To After Sixty, And Not Old Before Eighty.

If I Had A Formula For Bypassing Trouble, I Wouldn't Pass It Around. Wouldn't Be Doing Anybody A Favor. Trouble Creates A Capacity To Handle It. I Don't Say Embrace Trouble. That's As Bad As Treating It As An Enemy. But I Do Say, Meet It As A Friend, For You'll See A Lot Of It And Had Better Be On Speaking Terms With It.

Poverty Comes Pleading Not For Charity, For The Most Part, But Imploring Us To Find A Purchaser For Its Unmarketable Wares.

Certitude Leads To Violence. This Is A Proposition That Has An Easy Application And A Difficult One. The Easy Application Is To Ideoologues, Dogmatists, And Bullies--people Who Think That Their Rigtness Justifies Them In Imposing On Anyone Who Does Not Happen To Suscribe To Their Particular Ideology, Dogma Or Notion Of Turf. If The Conviction Of Rightness Is Powerful Enough, Resistance To It Will Be Met, Sooner Or Later By Force. There Are People Like This In Every Sphere Of Life, And It Is Natural To Feel That The World Would Be A Better Place Without Them!

A River Is More Than An Amenity, It Is A Treasure.

Our Dead Brothers And Sisters Still Live For Us And Bid Us Think Of Life, Not Death-of Life To Which In Their Youth They Lent The Passion And Glory Of Spring. As I Listen, The Great Chorus Of Life And Joy Begins Again, And Amid The Awful Orchestra Of Seen And Unseen Powers And Destinies Of Good And Evil, Our Trumpets Sound Once More A Note Of Daring, Hope, And Will.

The World Is Always Ready To Receive Talent With Open Arms. Very Often It Does Not Know What To Do With Genius.

We Must Think Things Not Words, Or At Least We Must Constantly Translate Our Words Into The Facts For Which They Stand, If We Are To Keep To The Real And The True.

But I Have Long Thought That If You Knew A Column Of Advertisements By Heart, You Could Achieve Unexpected Felicities With Them. You Can Get A Happy Quotation Anywhere If You Have The Eye.

People Talk Fundamentals And Superlatives And Then Make Some Changes Of Detail.

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.

Be Willing To Commit Yourself To A Course, Perhaps A Long And Hard One, Without Being Able To Foresee Exactly Where You Will Come Out.

But When Men Have Realized That Time Has Upset Many Fighting Faiths, They May Come To Believe...that The Best Test Of Truth Is The Power Of The Thought To Get Itself Accepted In The Competition Of The Market... That At Any Rate Is The Theory Of Our Constitution.

There Are Three Natural Anaesthetics: Sleep, Fainting, And Death.

The Character Of Every Act Depends Upon The Circumstances In Which It Is Done.

What I Wouldn't Give To Be Seventy Again!

Our Morality Seems To Be Only A Check On The Ultimate Domination Of Force, Just As Our Politeness Is A Check On The Impulse Of Every Pig To Put His Feet In The Trough.

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.

I Despise Making The Most Of One's Time. Half Of The Pleasures Of Life Consist Of The Opportunities One Has Neglected.

Knowledge And Timber Shouldn't Be Much Used Till They Are Seasoned.

The Great End Of Being Is To Harmonize Man With The Order Of Things, And The Church Has Been A Good Pitch-pipe, And May Be So Still.

Blood Is A Destiny. One's Genius Descends In The Stream From Long Lines Of Ancestry.

There Is No Time Like The Old Time, When You And I Were Young!

A Person Of Genius Should Marry A Person Of Character.

The Thing I Want To Do Is Put As Many New Ideas Into The Law As I Can, To Show How Particular Solutions Involve General Theory, And To Do It With Style. I Should Like To Be Admitted To Be The Greatest Jurist In The World.

To Be Civilized Is To Be Potentially Master Of All Possible Ideas, And That Means That One Has Got Beyond Being Shocked, Although One Preserves One's Own Moral Aesthetic Preferences.

Certainty Generally Is Illusion, And Repose Is Not The Destiny Of Man.

Why Should You Row A Boat Race? Why Endure The Long Months Of Pain In Preparation For A Fierce Half Hour That Will Leave You All But Dead? Does Anyone Ask The Question? Is There Anyone Who Would Not Go Through All The Costs, And More, For The Moment When Anguish Breaks Into Triumph Or Even For The Glory Of Having Nobly Lost? Is Life Less Than A Boat Race? If A Man Will Give The Blood In His Body To Win The One, Will He Spend All The Might Of His Soul To Prevail In The Other?

The Foliage Has Been Losing Its Freshness Through The Month Of August, And Here And There A Yellow Leaf Shows Itself Like The First Gray Hair Amidst The Locks Of A Beauty Who Has Seen One Season Too Many.

To Be Master Of Any Branch Of Knowledge, You Must Master Those Which Lie Next To It, And Thus To Know Anything You Must Know All.

This Is A Court Of Law, Not A Court Of Justice.

The History Of What The Law Has Been Is Necessary To The Knowledge Of What The Law Is.

There Is Something Frightful In The Way In Which Not Only Characteristic Qualities, But Particular Manifestations Of Them, Are Repeated From Generation To Generation.

We Have Been Cocksure Of Many Things That Were Not So.

Any New Formula Which Suddenly Emerges In Our Consciousness Has Its Roots In Long Trains Of Thought; It Is Virtually Old When It First Makes Its Appearance Among The Recognized Growths Of Our Intellect.

Train Of Thought

It's A Good Thing To Be Rich And A Good Thing To Be Strong, But It Is A Better Thing To Be Beloved Of Many Friends.

Liberty Is Often A Heavy Burden On A Man. It Involves The Necessity For Perpetual Choice Which Is The Kind Of Labor Men Have Always Dreaded.

To An Imagination Of Any Scope The Most Far Reaching Form Of Power Is Not Money, It Is The Command Of Ideas

No Generalization Is Wholly True—not Even This One.

Through Our Great Good Fortune, In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched With Fire. It Was Given To Us To Learn At The Outset That Life Is A Profound And Passionate Thing.

If You Can Eat Sawdust Without Butter, You Can Be A Success In The Law.

From Forty To Fifty A Man Must Move Upward, Or The Natural Falling Off In The Vigor Of Life Will Carry Him Rapidly Downward.

Detached Reflection Cannot Be Demanded In The Presence Of An Uplifted Knife.

Every Real Thought On Every Real Subject Knocks The Wind Out Of Somebody Or Other.

Whatever Disagreement There May Be As To The Scope Of The Phrase "due Process Of Law" There Can Be No Doubt That It Embraces The Fundamental Conception Of A Fair Trial, With Opportunity To Be Heard.

Men, Like Peaches And Pears, Grow Sweet A Little While Before They Begin To Decay.

What A New Face Courage Puts On Everything. - Ralph Waldo Emerson To Be Seventy Years Young Is Sometimes Far More Cheerful And Hopeful Than To Be Forty Years Old.

The Worst Of A Modern Stylish Mansion Is That It Has No Place For Ghosts.

Imitation Is A Necessity Of Human Nature.

Pretty Much All Law Consists In Forbidding Men To Do Something That They Want To Do.

There Is A Little Plant Called Reverence In The Corner Of My Soul's Garden, Which I Love To Have Watered Once A Week.

In Order To Know Whether A Human Being Is Young Or Old, Offer It Food Of Different Kinds At Short Intervals. If Young, It Will Eat Anything At Any Hour Of The Day Or Night.

Young Feller, You Will Never Appreciate The Potentialities Of The English Language Until You Have Heard A Southern Mule Driver Search The Soul Of A Mule.

Systems Die; Instincts Remain.

The Most Stringent Protection Of Free Speech Would Not Protect A Man In Falsely Shouting Fire In A Theater And Causing A Panic.

To Have Doubted One's Own First Principles Is The Mark Of A Civilized Man.

To Us Who Remain Behind Is Left This Day Of Memories. Every Year--in The Full Tide Of Spring, At The Height Of The Symphony Of Flowers And Love And Life--there Comes A Pause, And Through The Silence We Hear The Lonely Pipe Of Death.

A Mind That Is Stretched By A New Experience Can Never Go Back To Its Old Dimensions.

Our Test Of Truth Is A Reference To Either A Present Or Imagined Future Majority In Favour Of Our View.

A Man's Opinions Are Generally Of Much More Value Than His Arguments.

The Axis Of The Earth Sticks Out Visibly Through The Center Of Each And Every Town Or City.

Lord, Bid War's Trumpet Cease; Fold The Whole Earth In Peace.

Science Is The Topography Of Ignorance. From A Few Elevated Points We Triangulate Vast Spaces, Inclosing Infinite Unknown Details. We Cast The Lead, And Draw Up A Little Sand From Abysses We May Never Reach With Our Dredges.

Society Is Always Trying In Some Way To Grind Us Down To A Single Flat Surface.

Men Must Turn Square Corners When They Deal With The Government.

These Are The Hands Whose Sturdy Labor Brings The Peasant's Food, The Golden Pomp Of Kings; This Is The Page Whose Letters Shall Be Seen, Changed By The Sun To Words Of Living Green; This Is The Scholar Whose Immortal Penspells The First Lesson Hunger Taught To Men; These Are The Lines That Heaven-commanded Toil Shows On His Deed, - The Charter Of The Soil!

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.

A Great Man Represents A Great Ganglion In The Nerves Of Society, Or To Vary The Figure, A Strategic Point In The Campaign Of History, And Part Of His Greatness Consists In His Being There.

The Root Of Joy, As Of Duty, Is To Put All One's Powers Towards Some Great End.

Success. Is Not The Position Where You Are Standing, But Which Direction You Are Going.

If Wine Tells Truth - And So Have Said The Wise, It Makes Me Laugh To Think How Brandy Lies!

Fate Tried To Conceal Him By Naming Him Smith.

Every Man Is An Omnibus In Which His Ancestors Ride.

Every Calling Is Great When Greatly Pursued.

The Greatest Act Of Faith Is When A Man Understands He Is Not God.

Go On, Fair Science; Soon To Thee Shall Nature Yield Her Idle Boast; Her Vulgar Lingers Formed A Tree, But Thou Hast Trained It To A Post.

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.

The Man Of Action Has The Present, But The Thinker Controls The Future.

To Know Is Not Less Than To Feel.

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.

We Are All Tattooed In Our Cradles With The Beliefs Of Our Tribe; The Record May Seem Superficial, But It Is Indelible.

Longevity Is Having A Chronic Disease - And Taking Care Of It.

Apologizing - A Very Desperate Habit - One That Is Rarely Cured. Apology Is Only Egotism Wrong Side Out.

Between Two Groups Of People Who Want To Make Inconsistent Kinds Of Worlds, I See No Remedy But Force.

Nothing Is So Commonplace Has The Wish To Be Remarkable.

Eloquence May Set Fire To Reason.

There Are Many Things Which We Can Afford To Forget Which It Is Yet Well To Learn.

I Have No Respect For The Passion Of Equality, Which Seems To Me Merely Idealizing Envy - I Don't Disparage Envy, But I Don't Accept It As Legitimately My Master.

To Rest Upon A Formula Is A Slumber That, Prolonged, Means Death.

It Takes Me Several Days, After I Get Back To Boston, To Realize That The Reference "the President" Refers To The President Of Harvard And Not To A Minor Official In Washington.

Who Does Not Feel That Nansen's Account Of His Search For The Pole Rather Loses Than Gains In Ideal Satisfaction By The Pretense Of A Few Trifling Acquisitions For Science?

Modesty And Reverence Are No Less Virtues Of Freemen Than The Democratic Feeling Which Will Submit Neither To Arrogance Nor To Servility.

It Is Mere Childishness To Expect Men To Believe As Their Fathers Did; That Is, If They Have Any Minds Of Their Own. The World Is A Whole Generation Older And Wiser Than When The Father Was Of His Son's Age.

Deep-seated Preferences Cannot Be Argued About - You Cannot Argue A Man Into Liking A Glass Of Beer.

The Best Of A Book Is Not The Thought Which It Contains, But The Thought Which It Suggests; Just As The Charm Of Music Dwells Not In The Tones But In The Echoes Of Our Hearts.

The Law Is The Witness And External Deposit Of Our Moral Life. Its History Is The History Of The Moral Development Of The Race.

Moral Development

The Advice Of The Elders To Young Men Is Very Apt To Be As Unreal As A List Of The Hundred Best Books.

Knowledge-it Excites Prejudices To Call It Science-is Advancing As Irresistibly, As Majestically, As Remorselessly As The Ocean Moves In Upon The Shore.

To Brag Little, To Lose Well, / To Crow Gently If In Luck, / To Pay Up, To Own Up, / To Shut Up If Beaten, / Are The Virtues Of A Sportingman.

Pretty Much All The Honest Truth-telling There Is In The World Is Done By Children.

With All Humility, I Think, "whatsoever Thy Hand Findeth To Do, Do It With Thy Might." Infinitely More Important Than The Vain Attempt To Love One's Neighbor As One's Self. If You Want To Hit A Bird On The Wing You Must Have All Your Will In Focus, You Must Not Be Thinking About Yourself, And Equally, You Must Not Be Thinking About Your Neighbor; You Must Be Living With Your Eye On That Bird. Every Achievement Is A Bird On The Wing.

Men Are Tattooed With Their Special Beliefs Like So Many South Sea Islanders; But A Real Human Heart With Divine Love In It Beats With The Same Glow Under All The Patterns Of All Earth's Thousand Tribes.

Every Now And Then A Man's Mind Is Stretched By A New Idea Or Sensation, And Never Shrinks Back To Its Former Dimensions.

Man Has Will, But Woman Has Her Way.

Even A Dog Distinguishes Between Being Stumbled Over And Being Kicked.

In My Opinion, Economists And Sociologists Are The People To Whom We Ought To Turn More Than We Do For Instruction In The Grounds And Foundations Of All Rational Decisions.

The Nearer You Come Into Relation With A Person, The More Necessary Do Tact And Courtesy Become.

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.

My Right To Swing My Fist Ends Where Your Nose Begins.

To Be Forgotten Is To Sleep In Peace With The Undisturbed Myriads, No Longer Subject To The Chills And Heats, The Blasts, The Sleet, The Dust, Which Assail In Endless Succession That Shadow Of A Man Which We Call His Reputation.

Life Is An End In Itself, And The Only Question As To Whether It Is Worth Living Is Whether You Have Had Enough Of It.

I Know Of No Teachers So Powerful And Persuasive As The Little Army Of Specialists. They Carry No Banners, They Beat No Drums; But Where They Are Men Learn That Bustle And Push Are Not The Equals Of Quiet Genius And Serene Mastery.

We Are All Sentenced To Capital Punishment For The Crime Of Living, And Though The Condemned Cell Of Our Earthly Existence Is But A Narrow And Bare Dwelling-place, We Have Adjusted Ourselves To It, And Made It Tolerably Comfortable For The Little While We Are To Be Confined In It.

The Minute A Phrase, Becomes Current, It Becomes An Apology For Not Thinking Accurately To The End Of The Sentence.

Life Is A Fatal Complaint, And An Eminently Contagious One.

The World Has Its Fling At Lawyers Sometimes, But Its Very Denial Is An Admission. It Feels, What I Believe To Be The Truth, That Of All Secular Professions This Has The Highest Standards.

It Is Very Grand To Die In Harness, But It Is Very Pleasant To Have The Tight Straps Unbuckled And The Heavy Collar Lifted From The Neck And Shoulders.

It Is Perfectly Easy To Be Original By Violating The Laws Of Decency And The Canons Of Good Taste.

Life Is Painting A Picture, Not Doing A Sum.

There Was Never An Idea Started That Woke Up Men Out Of Their Stupid Indifference But Its Originator Was Spoken Of As A Crank.

Nothing Can Be So Perfect While We Possess It As It Will Seem When Remembered.

Most Of The Things We Do, We Do For No Better Reason Than That Our Fathers Have Done Them Or Our Neighbors Do Them, And The Same Is True Of A Larger Part Than What We Suspect Of What We Think.

The Provisions Of The Constitution Are Not Mathematical Formulas Having Their Essence In Their Form; They Are Organic, Living Institutions Transplanted From English Soil. Their Significance Is Vital, Not Formal; It Is To Be Gathered Not Simply By Taking The Words And A Dictionary, But By Considering Their Origin And The Line Of Their Growth.

General Propositions Do Not Decide Concrete Cases. The Decision Will Depend On A Judgment Or Intuition More Subtle Than Any Articulate Major Premise.

There Is Nothing Earthly That Lasts So Well, As Money. A Man's Learning Dies With Him, As Does His Virtues Fade Out Of Remembrance, But The Dividends On The Stocks He Bequeaths To His Children Live And Keep His Memory Green.

Life, Not The Parson, Teaches Conduct.

Taxes Are The Price We Pay For A Civilized Society.

Civilized Society

I Find The Great Thing In This World Is Not So Much Where We Stand, As In What Direction We Are Moving: To Reach The Port Of Heaven, We Must Sail Sometimes With The Wind And Sometimes Against It, But We Must Sail, And Not Drift, Nor Lie At Anchor.

I Like To Pay Taxes. With Them, I Buy Civilization.

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 Only Condition Of Peace In This World Is To Have No Ideas, Or, At Least Not To Express Them.

Leisure Only Means A Chance To Do Other Jobs That Demand Attention.

When A Man Holds His Tongue It Does Not Signify Much. But When A Woman Dispenses With The Office Of The Mighty Member, When She Sheathed Her Natural Weapon At A Trying Moment, It Means That She Trusts To Still More Formidable Enginery; To Tears It May Be, A Solvent More Powerful Than That With Which Hannibal Softened The Alpine Rocks.

For Him In Vain The Envious Seasons Roll Who Bears Eternal Summer In His Soul.

Even For Practical Purposes Theory Generally Turns Out The Most Important Thing In The End.

The Difference Between Gossip And Philosophy Lies Only In One's Way Of Taking A Fact.

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.

Three Generations Of Imbeciles Are Enough.

The Noblest Service Comes From Nameless Hands; And The Best Servant Does His Work Unseen.

Anytime You See A Hungarian, Kick Him. He'll Know Why. Any Two Philosophers Can Tell Each Other All They Know In Two Hours.

The Ideas Of The Classics, So Far As Living, Are Our Commonplaces. It Is The Modern Books That Give Us The Latest And Most Profound Conceptions. It Seems To Me Rather A Lazy Makeshift To Mumble Over The Familiar.

Even The Wisest Woman You Talk To Is Ignorant Of Something You May Know, But An Elegant Woman Never Forgets Her Elegance.

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.

I Should Like To See Any Kind Of Man, Distinguishable From A Gorilla, That Some Good And Even Pretty Woman Could Not Shape A Husband Out Of.

Fame Usually Comes To Those Who Are Thinking About Something Else.

Old Age Is Fifteen Years Older Than I Am.

The Individual Will Always Be A Minority. If A Man Is In A Minority Of One, We Lock Him Up.

Reason Means Truth And Those Who Are Not Governed By It Take The Chance That Someday The Sunken Fact Will Rip The Bottom Out Of Their Boat.

Young Men Know The Rules, But Old Men Know The Exceptions.

And Silence, Like A Poultice, Comes To Heal The Blows Of Sound.

We Expect More Of Ourselves Than We Have Any Right To.

Lawyers Spend Their Professional Careers Shoveling Smoke.

Reason May Be The Lever, But Sentiment Gives You The Fulcrum And The Place To Stand On If You Want To Move The World.

If There Is Any Principle Of The Constitution That More Imperatively Calls For Attachment Than Any Other It Is The Principle Of Free Thought, Not Free Thought For Those Who Agree With Us But Freedom For The Thought That We Hate.

Free Competition Is Worth More To Society Than It Costs.

But The Word "right" Is One Of The Most Deceptive Of Pitfalls; It Is So Easy To Slip From A Qualified Meaning In The Premise To An Unqualified One In The Conclusion. Most Rights Are Qualified.

On Every Stem, On Every Leaf,... And At The Root Of Everything That Grew, Was A Professional Specialist In The Shape Of Grub, Caterpillar, Aphis, Or Other Expert, Whose Business It Was To Devour That Particular Part.

There Is In All Men A Demand For The Superlative, So Much So That The Poor Devil That Has No Other Way Of Reaching It Attains It By Getting Drunk.

It Is Better For All The World, If Instead Of Waiting To Execute Degenerate Offspring For Crime Or To Let Them Starve For Their Imbecility, Society Can Prevent Those Who Are Manifestly Unfit From Continuing Their Kind. The Principle That Sustains Compulsory Vaccination Is Broad Enough To Cover Cutting The Fallopian Tubes. Three Generations Of Imbeciles Are Enough.

Young Man, The Secret Of My Success Is That An Early Age I Discovered That I Was Not God.

There Is No Friend Like The Old Friend, Who Has Shared Our Morning Days, No Greeting Like His Welcome, No Homage Like His Praise: Fame Is The Scentless Sunflower, With Gaudy Crown Of Gold; But Friendship Is The Breathing Rose, With Sweets In Every Fold.

Most People Have Died Before They Expire; Died To All Earthly Longings, So That The Last Breath Is Only, As It Were, The Locking Of The Door Of The Already Deserted Mansion.

While We've Youth In Our Hearts, We Can Never Grow Old.

On The Whole, I Am On The Side Of The Unregenerate Who Affirms The Worth Of Life As An End In Itself, As Against The Saints Who Deny It.

Beware Of Making Your Moral Staple Consist Of The Negative Virtues.

The Only Prize Much Cared For By The Powerful Is Power. The Prize Of The General Is Not A Bigger Tent, But Command.

For My Part I Think It Is A Less Evil That Some Criminals Should Escape, Than That The Government Should Play An Ignoble Part.

A Good Soldier, Like A Good Horse, Cannot Be Of A Bad Color.

If I Had A Formula For Bypassing Trouble, I Would Not Pass It Around. Trouble Creates A Capacity To Handle It.

We Should Be Eternally Vigilant Against Attempts To Check The Expression Of Opinions That We Loathe.

I Have Always Sought To Guide The Future-but It Is Very Lonely Sometimes Trying To Play God.

Old Age Is Like An Opium Dream. Nothing Seems Real Except The Unreal.

A New And Valid Idea Is Worth More Than A Regiment And Fewer Men Can Furnish The Former Than Command The Latter.

The Mode By Which The Inevitable Comes To Pass Is Effort.

The Preacher's Garment Is Cut According To The Pattern Of That Of The Hearers, For The Most Part.

The Mark Of A Civilized Man Is His Willingness To Re-examine His Most Cherished Beliefs.

To Think Great Thoughts You Must Be Heroes As Well As Idealists.

War? War Is An Organized Bore.

Carve Every Word Before You Let It Fall.

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