RUFUS CHOATE

We have no national temples but the Capitol; we consult no common oracle but the Constitution.

I will look, your Honor, and endeavor to find a precedent, if you require it; though it would seem to be a pity that the Court should lose the honor of being the first to establish so just a rule.

Power, carried to extremes, is always liable to reaction.

Happy is he who has laid up in his youth, and held fast in all fortune, a genuine and passionate love of reading.

We join ourselves to no party that does not carry the flag and keep step to the music of the Union.

History shows you prospects by starlight, or at best by the waning moon.

A book is the only immortality.

Appropriated to justice, to security, to reason, to restraint; where there is no respect of persons; where will is nothing and power is nothing and numbers are nothing, and all are equal and all secure before the law.

No lawyer can afford to be ignorant of the Bible.

Do we sufficiently appreciate how omnipotent is opinion in the matter of all government? Do we consider especially in how true a sense it is the creator, must be the upholder, and may be the destroyer of our united government?

Happy is he who has laid up in his youth, and held fast in all fortune, a genuine and passionate love of reading.

A book is the only immortality.

Do we sufficiently appreciate how omnipotent is opinion in the matter of all government? Do we consider especially in how true a sense it is the creator, must be the upholder, and may be the destroyer of our united government?

The courage of New England was the courage of conscience.

The final end of government is not to exert restraint but to do good.

We have no national temples but the Capitol; we consult no common oracle but the Constitution.

We join ourselves to no party that does not carry the flag and keep step to the music of the Union.

Neither irony nor sarcasm is argument.

The absolute justice of the State, enlightened by the perfect reason of the State. That is law.

Knowledge is power as well as fame.

History shows you prospects by starlight, or at best by the waning moon.

There was a state without king or nobles; there was a church without a bishop; there was a people governed by grave magistrates which it had selected, and by equal laws which it had framed.

You don't want a diction gathered from the newspapers, caught from the air, common and unsuggestive; but you want one whose every word is full-freighted with suggestion and association, with beauty and power.

Appropriated to justice, to security, to reason, to restraint; where there is no respect of persons; where will is nothing and power is nothing and numbers are nothing, and all are equal and all secure before the law.

No lawyer can afford to be ignorant of the Bible.

I will look, your Honor, and endeavor to find a precedent, if you require it; though it would seem to be a pity that the Court should lose the honor of being the first to establish so just a rule.

Its Constitution--the glittering and sounding generalities of natural right which make up the Declaration of Independence.

Power, carried to extremes, is always liable to reaction.

All that happens in the world of Nature or Man, - every war; every peace; every hour of prosperity; every hour of adversity; every election; every death ; every life; every success and every failure, - all change, - all permanence, - the perished leaf; the unutterable glory of stars, - all things speak truth to the thoughtful spirit.

The courage of New England was the courage of conscience. It did not rise to that insane and awful passion, the love of war for itself.