The same Talmud that fills chapter after chapter with minute legal details and hairsplitting debates outlines with a few strokes the most ideal conception of life, worth more than theories and systems of religious philosophy.
"Jewish Literature and Other Essays"
Gustav Karpeles
This being a fact as plain and large as the sun, it is needless to consider the hairsplitting debates of the economists as to whether the condition of this or that class of the masses in this or that country was a grain better or two grains worse than it had been.
"Equality"
Edward Bellamy
Of what practical use then, it may be asked, is all this hairsplitting?
"Some Principles of Maritime Strategy"
Julian Stafford Corbett