Quotes
Quotes about Law
Reason is the life of the law; nay, the common law itself is nothing else but reason.... The law, which is perfection of reason.
They (corporations) cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed nor
excommunicate, for they have no souls.
Six hours in sleep, in law's grave study six,
Four spend in prayer, the rest on Nature fix.
f Law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage,--the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power.
He reckoneth without his Hostesse. Love knoweth no lawes.
Who to himself is law no law doth need,
Offends no law, and is a king indeed.
And do as adversaries do in law,--
Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.
Still you keep o' the windy side of the law.
Old father antic the law.
Between two hawks, which flies the higher pitch;
Between two dogs, which hath the deeper mouth;
Between two blades, which bears the better temper;
Between two horses, which doth bear him best;
Between two girls, which hath the merriest eye,--
I have perhaps some shallow spirit of judgment;
But in these nice sharp quillets of the law,
Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw.
The world is not thy friend nor the world's law.
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep:
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,--'t is a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
1 Clo. Argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.
2 Clo. But is this law?
1 Clo. Ay, marry, is 't; crowner's quest law.
Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks?
The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.
The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o'er a cold decree.
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt
But being season'd with a gracious voice
Obscures the show of evil?
Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.
Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled. Mahomet called the hill to come to him, again and again; and when the hill stood still he was never a whit abashed, but said, "If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill."
Our wrangling lawyers... are so litigious and busy here on earth, that I think they will plead their clients' causes hereafter,--some of them in hell.
Equity is a roguish thing. For Law we have a measure, know what to trust to; Equity is according to the conscience of him that is Chancellor, and as that is larger or narrower, so is Equity. 'T is all one as if they should make the standard for the measure we call a "foot" a Chancellor's foot; what an uncertain measure would this be! One Chancellor has a long foot, another a short foot, a third an indifferent foot. 'T is the same thing in the Chancellor's conscience.
Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because 't is an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to refute him.
And he that gives us in these days
New Lords may give us new laws.
A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine;
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws
Makes that and th' action fine.
Have always been at daggers-drawing,
And one another clapper-clawing.
