Rufus Choate Quotes & Sayings

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

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

Knowledge is power as well as fame. — Rufus Choate

A book is the only immortality — Rufus Choate

No lawyer can afford to be ignorant of the Bible. — Rufus Choate

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

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. — Rufus Choate

Power, carried to extremes, is always liable to reaction. — Rufus Choate

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

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

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. — Rufus Choate

Anything more low, obscene, feculent, the manifold heaving's of history have not cast up. We shall come to the worship of onions, cats and things vermiculite. — Rufus Choate

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. — Rufus Choate

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. — Rufus Choate

Neither irony nor sarcasm is argument. — Rufus Choate

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. — Rufus Choate

Mathematics may, be briefly defined as the science of quantities, and is one of the most important of disciplining studies which engage the practical student. — Rufus Choate

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. — Rufus Choate