Rufus Choate Quotations

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

A book is the only immortality.

Neither irony nor sarcasm is argument.

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.

No lawyer can afford to be ignorant of the Bible.

We have built no temple but the Capitol. We consult no common oracle but the Constitution.

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.

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

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

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