No truer word, save God's, was ever spoken, Than that the largest heart is soonest broken.
Anger may be kindled in the noblest breasts: but in these slow droppings of an unforgiving temper never takes the shape of consistency of enduring hatred.
Pain is evitable. Suffering is optional.
Avoid, which many grave men have not done, words taken from sacred subjects and from elevated poetry: these we have seen vilely prostituted. Avoid too the society of the barbarians who misemploy them.
Women do come up to me after a show, but it's usually to say, 'Yhank you for making us laugh,' and all that.
Our institutions, if they do not erode entirely, can survive periods of decadence brought on by our material success, eras when the whole notion of civic militarism seems bothersome, and in which free speech is used to focus on our own imperfections without concern for the ghastly nature of our enemies.
If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began: 'The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,' I would hide my head in a bag. The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.