Leisure only means a chance to do other jobs that demand attention.
Most of us retain enough of the theological attitude to think that we are little gods.
History has to be rewritten because history is the selection of those threads of causes or antecedents that we are interested in.
The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.
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.
Longevity is having a chronic disease – and taking care of it.
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.
If you don’t know what you want, you will probably never get it.
Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.
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.
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.
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?
War? War is an organized bore.
The history of what the law has been is necessary to the knowledge of what the law is.
We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.
Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.
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.
General propositions do not decide concrete cases. The decision will depend on a judgment or intuition more subtle than any articulate major premise.
Life, not the parson, teaches conduct.
My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins.