Great cases like hard cases make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their importance in shaping the law of the future, but b… - Oliver Wendell Holmes

I can't help preferring champagne to ditch water — I doubt if the universe does.

Every calling is great when greatly pursued.

In other words, those great judges, although of course aware that a ship is no more alive than a mill-wheel, thought that not only the law did in fact deal with it as if it were alive, but that it was reasonable that the law should do so. The reader will observe that they do not say simply that it is reasonable on grounds of policy to sacrifice justice to the owner to security for somebody else but that it is reasonable to deal with the vessel as an offending thing. Whatever the hidden ground of policy may be, their thought still clothes itself in personifying language.