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The common law is not a brooding omnipresence in the sky, but the articulate voice of some sovereign or quasi sovereign that can be identified although some decisions with which I have disagreed seem to me to have forgotten the fact.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Age: 93 †
Born: 1841
Born: March 8
Died: 1935
Died: March 6
Judge
Jurist
Lawyer
Philosopher
Politician
University Teacher
Boston
Massachusetts
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Oliver W. Holmes
Jr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr
Holmes
Oliver Wendell
Jr.
Oliver Wendell
Jr. Holmes
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Jr
Oliver Holmes
Jr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
jr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Jr.
Common
Sovereign
Fact
Decisions
Omnipresence
Voice
Although
Quasi
Facts
Sky
Disagreed
Seems
Forgotten
Brooding
Seem
Articulate
Decision
Identified
Law
Sovereignty

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This is a court of law, not a court of justice.
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Our test of truth is a reference to either a present or imagined future majority in favour of our view.
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We are all sentenced to capital punishment for the crime of living, and though the condemned cell of our earthly existence is but a narrow and bare dwelling-place, we have adjusted ourselves to it, and made it tolerably comfortable for the little while we are to be confined in it.
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The world has its fling at lawyers sometimes, but its very denial is an admission. It feels, what I believe to be the truth, that of all secular professions this has the highest standards.
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Where we stand is not as important as the direction in which we are moving.
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Young feller, you will never appreciate the potentialities of the English language until you have heard a Southern mule driver search the soul of a mule.
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The thing I want to do is put as many new ideas into the law as I can, to show how particular solutions involve general theory, and to do it with style. I should like to be admitted to be the greatest jurist in the world.
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Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.
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It's a good thing to be rich and a good thing to be strong, but it is a better thing to be beloved of many friends.
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To be master of any branch of knowledge, you must master those which lie next to it, and thus to know anything you must know all.
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Apologizing - a very desperate habit - one that is rarely cured. Apology is only egotism wrong side out.
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Poverty comes pleading not for charity, for the most part, but imploring us to find a purchaser for its unmarketable wares.
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The great end of being is to harmonize man with the order of things, and the church has been a good pitch-pipe, and may be so still.
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The greatest act of faith is when a man understands he is not God.
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My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins.
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The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.
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The language of judicial decision is mainly the language of logic. And the logical method and form flatter that longing for certainty and for repose which is in every human mind. But certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.
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Longevity is having a chronic disease - and taking care of it.
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