Part 55

If there be any one principle more widely than another confessed by every utterance, or more sternly than another imprinted on every atom of the visible creation, that principle is not liberty, but law.--Ruskin.

It would be very singular if this great shad-net of the law did not enable men to catch at something, balking for the time the eternal flood-tide of justice.--Chapin.

True law is right reason conformably to nature, universal, unchangeable, eternal, whose commands urge us to duty, and whose prohibitions restrain us from evil.--Cicero.

Aristotle himself has said, speaking of the laws of his own country, that jurisprudence, or the knowledge of those laws, is the principal and most perfect branch of ethics.--Blackstone.

In effect, to follow, not to force, the public inclination, to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislation.--Burke.

In the habits of legal men every accusation appears insufficient if they do not exaggerate it even to calumny. It is thus that justice itself loses its sanctity and its respect amongst men.--Lamartine.

Pity is the virtue of the law, and none but tyrants use it cruelly.--Shakespeare.

It is a very easy thing to devise good laws; the difficulty is to make them effective. The great mistake is that of looking upon men as virtuous, or thinking that they can be made so by laws; and consequently the greatest art of a politician is to render vices serviceable to the cause of virtue.--Bolingbroke.

A mouse-trap; easy to enter but not easy to get out of.--Mrs Balfour.

What can idle laws do with morals?--Horace.

The law is a gun, which if it misses a pigeon always kills a crow; if it does not strike the guilty it hits some one else. As every crime creates a law, so in turn every law creates a crime.--Bulwer-Lytton.

~Learning.~--It adds a precious seeing to the eye.--Shakespeare.

You are to consider that learning is of great use to society; and though it may not add to the stock, it is a necessary vehicle to transmit it to others. Learned men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountain-heads.--James Northcote.

Learning makes a man fit company for himself.--Young.

Learning maketh young men temperate, is the comfort of old age, standing for wealth with poverty, and serving as an ornament to riches.--Cicero.

The chief art of learning, as Locke has observed, is to attempt but little at a time. The widest excursions of the mind are made by short flights frequently repeated; the most lofty fabrics of science are formed by the continued accumulation of single propositions.--Johnson.

No man can ever want this mortification of his vanity, that what he knows is but a very little, in comparison of what he still continues ignorant of. Consider this, and, instead of boasting thy knowledge of a few things, confess and be out of countenance for the many more which thou dost not understand.--Thomas à Kempis.

Suppose we put a tax upon learning? Learning, it is true, is a useless commodity, but I think we had better lay it on ignorance; for learning being the property but of a very few, and those poor ones too, I am afraid we can get little among them; whereas ignorance will take in most of the great fortunes in the kingdom.--Fielding.

For ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training is a much greater misfortune.--Plato.

No power can exterminate the seeds of liberty when it has germinated in the blood of brave men. Our religion of to-day is still that of martyrdom; to-morrow it will be the religion of victory.--Mazzini.

~Leisure.~--"Never less idle than when idle," was the motto which the admirable Vittoria Colonna wrought upon her husband's dressing-gown. And may we not justly regard our appreciation of leisure as a test of improved character and growing resources?--Tuckerman.

Leisure is gone; gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow wagons, and the peddlers who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons.--George Eliot.

~Libels.~--Undoubtedly the good fame of every man ought to be under the protection of the laws, as well as his life and liberty and property. Good fame is an outwork that defends them all and renders them all valuable. The law forbids you to revenge; when it ties up the hands of some, it ought to restrain the tongues of others.--Burke.

If it was a new thing, it may be I should not be displeased with the suppression of the first libel that should abuse me; but, since there are enough of them to make a small library, I am secretly pleased to see the number increased, and take delight in raising a heap of stones that envy has cast at me without doing me any harm.--Balzac.

~Liberty.~--Liberty is the right to do what the laws allow; and if a citizen could do what they forbid, it would be no longer liberty, because others would have the same powers.--Montesquieu.

If the true spark of religious and civil liberty be kindled, it will burn. Human agency cannot extinguish it. Like the earth's central fire, it may be smothered for a time; the ocean may overwhelm it; mountains may press it down; but its inherent and unconquerable force will heave both the ocean and the land, and at some time or another, in some place or another, the volcano will break out and flame to heaven.--Daniel Webster.

Interwoven is the love of liberty with every ligament of the heart.--Washington.

~Library.~--A large library is apt to distract rather than to instruct the learner; it is much better to be confined to a few authors than to wander at random over many.--Seneca.