Laws that only threaten, and are not kept, become like the log that was given to the frogs to be their king, which they feared at first, but soon scorned and trampled on.

The science of legislation is like that of medicine in one respect: that it is far more easy to point out what will do harm than what will do good.

If there were no bad people there would be no good lawyers.

Anyone who takes it upon himself, on his private authority, to break a bad law, thereby authorizes everyone else to break the good ones.

A just cause needs no interpreting. It carries its own case. But the unjust argument since it is sick, needs clever medicine.

Give a wise man an honest brief to plead and his eloquence is no remarkable achievement.

The story of man is the history, first, of the acceptance and imposition of restraints necessary to permit communal life; and second, of the emancipation of the individual within that system of necessary restraints.

Fragile as reason is and limited as law is as the institutionalized medium of reason, that's all we have standing between us and the tyranny of mere will and the cruelty of unbridled, undisciplined feeling.

God works wonders now and then: Behold! a lawyer, an honest man!

Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.