Former lord chancellor Quotes

Education makes a people easy to lead but difficult to drive easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.

May, queen of blossoms, And fulfilling flowers, With what pretty music Shall we charm the hours? Wilt thou have pipe and reed, Blown in the open mead? Or to the lute give heed In the green bowers.

When I forget my sovereign, may my God forget me.

Real knowledge never promoted either turbulence or unbelief;

but its progress is the forerunner of liberality and enlightened toleration.

It is well to read everything of something, and something of everything.

A lawyer is a gentleman that rescues your estate from your enemies and then keeps it for himself.

Pursuit of knowledge under difficulties.

It is necessary that I should qualify the doctrine of its being not men, but measures, that I am determined to support. In a monarchy it is the duty of parliament to look at the men as well as at the measures.

To succeed as a lawyer, a man must work like a horse and live like a hermit.

Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like.

In my mind, he was guilty of no error - he was chargeable with no exaggeration - he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once said that all we see about us, Kings, Lords, and Commons, the whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its varied workings, end in simply bringing twelve good men into a box.

Let the soldier be abroad if he will, he can do nothing in this age.

There is another personage, - a personage less imposing in the eyes of some, perhaps insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array...

The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array...

What individual can so well assess the amount of damages which a plaintiff ought to recover for an injury he has received than an intelligent jury?

Certainty is the mother of repose, and therefore the common law aims at certainty.

A reasonable fine is such as the law will judge to be so .

. . but what a reasonable fine is, and who shall be the judge of it, the law has established no rule.

The union of Church and State is not to make the Church political, but the State religious.

Christianity is part of the law of England.

Common sense is in spite of, not because of age.

You never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose, nor a body to kick.

Nature is always wise in every part.

Not a step can we take in any direction without perceiving the most extraordinary traces of design; and the skill everywhere conspicuous is calculated in so vast a proportion of instances to promote the happiness of living creatures, and especially of ourselves, that we feel no hesitation in concluding that, if we knew the whole scheme of Providence, every part would appear to be in harmony with a plan of absolute benevolence.

Give a child the habit of sacredly regarding the truth - of carefully respecting the property of others - of scrupulously abstaining from all acts of improvidence which can involve him in distress, and he will just as likely think of rushing into the element in which he cannot breathe, as of lying or cheating or stealing.

I trust everything, under God, to habit, upon which, in all ages, the lawgiver, as well as the schoolmaster, has mainly placed his reliance,--habit, which makes everything easy, and casts all difficulties upon the deviation from the wonted course.

Make sobriety a habit, and intemperance will be hateful;

make prudence a habit, and reckless profligacy will be as contrary to the nature of the child, grown or adult, as the most atrocious crimes, are to any of us.

I abominate war as Unchristian. I hold it the greatest of human crimes. I deem it to involve all others,--violence, blood, rapine, fraud; everything that can deform the character, alter the nature, and debase the name of man.

War is a crime which involves all other crimes.

That what is agreed to be done, must be considered as done.