The quote database

The Amendment must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.

Our constitutional system amply provides for the protection of minorities by means other than giving them majority control of state legislatures.

To the extent that a citizen's right to vote is debased, he is that much less a citizen.

Our answer is this: a denial of constitutionally protected rights demands judicial protection; our oath and our office require no less of us.

The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.

Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

Each time you happen to me all over again.

The economy of injustice is to furnish resources for the fund of corruption.

Tyrannous exaction brings on servile concealment; and that again calls forth tyrannous coercion.

Our attempts to banish this importunate duty will only make it return upon us again and again, and every time in a shape more unpleasant than the former.

Baffled, discountenanced, subdued, discredited, as the cause of justice and humanity is, it will be only the dearer to me.

When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong principle at work; and this, for a while, is all I can possibly know of it.

The Revolution was made to preserve our ancient indisputable laws and liberties, and that ancient constitution of government which is our only security for law and liberty.

An armed disciplined body is, in its essence, dangerous to liberty; undisciplined, it is ruinous to society.

The style shall be simple and familiar; but style is the image of character; and the habits of correct writing may produce, without labour or design, the appearance of art and study.

The affectionate heart of my aunt, Catherine Porten, bewailed a sister and a friend; but my poor father was inconsolable, and the transport of grief seemed to threaten his life or his reason.

A boy of spirit may acquire a previous and practical experience of the world; and his playfellows may be the future friends of his heart or his interest.

Yet is it far better to light the candle than to curse the darkness.

Perhaps when all is written courageously, I shall have no courage left to publish it.

The unity of God preserves a unity in men--that is, a perpetual sympathy between man and man--which sympathy we must be subject to, if not in our joys, yet in our griefs.

you would wonder at seeing how possible it is to live as secludedly in the midst of a multitude as in the centre of solitude

Once I wished not to live, but the faculty of life seems to have sprung up in me again, from under the crushing foot of heavy grief.

There are probably as many different dialects for the heart as for the tongue, are there not?

Life is not only short, but uncertain, and art is not only long, but absorbing.

In our sorrow we see the rough side of the stuff; in our joys the smooth; and who shall say that when the taffeta is turned the most silk may not be in the sorrows?