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

Law never is, but is always about to be..

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

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

As I search the archives of my memory I seem to discern six types or methods [of judicial writing] which divide themselves from one another with meas….

Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a legal right to determine what shall be done with his own body..

Prophecy, however honest, is generally a poor substitute for experience..

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….

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

Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice..

The great ideals of liberty and equality are preserved against the assaults of opportunism, the expediency of the passing hour, the erosion of small ….

The Constitution was framed upon the theory that the peoples of the several states must sink or swim together, and that in the long run prosperity an….

The constant assumption runs throughout the law that the natural and spontaneous evolutions of habit fix the limits of right and wrong..

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

It is for ordinary minds, not for psychoanalysts, that our rules of evidence are framed. They have their source very often in considerations of admin….

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

With traps and obstacles and hazards confronting us on every hand, only blindness or indifference will fail to turn in all humility, for guidance or ….

More truly characteristic of dissent is a dignity, an elevation, of mood and thought and phrase. Deep conviction and warm feeling are saying their la….

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

There is in each of us a stream of tendency, whether you choose to call it philosophy or not, which gives coherence and direction to thought and acti….

We seek to find peace of mind in the word, the formula, the ritual. The hope is illusion..