Attributed from postum publications
Source: Jeffrey Eisenach et al. (1993), Readings in renewing American civilization, p. 54
Nos lois civiles ne seront jamais assez souples pour s'adapter à l'immense et fluide variété des faits. Elles changent moins vite que les moeurs; dangereuses quand elles retardent sur celles-ci, elles le sont davantage quand elles se mêlent de les précéder.
Source: Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), p. 113
Founding Address (1876)
Context: The Hebrew prophets said of old, to serve Jehovah is to make your hearts pure and your hands clean from corruption, to help the suffering, to raise the oppressed. Jesus of Nazareth said that he came to comfort the weary and heavy laden. The Philosopher affirms that the true service of religion is the unselfish service of the common weal. There is no difference among them all. There is no difference in the law. But so long have they quarreled concerning the origin of law that the law itself has fallen more and more into abeyance. For indeed, as it is easier to say. "I do not believe," and have done with it, so also it is easier to say, "I believe," and thus to bribe one's way into heaven, as it were, than to fulfill nobly our human duties with all the daily struggle and sacrifice which they involve.
“Proceedings at law are sufficiently expensive.”
Marriott v. Hampton (1797), 2 Esp. 548.
“No law is sufficiently convenient to all.”
Book XXXIV, sec. 3
History of Rome
“When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.”
Part 6, Chapter 3
Books, Coningsby (1844), Contarini Fleming (1832)
“The written law is binding, but the unwritten law is much more so.”
The Law
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books
Context: The written law is binding, but the unwritten law is much more so. You may break the written law at a pinch and on the sly if you can, but the unwritten law — which often comprises the written — must not be broken. Not being written, it is not always easy to know what it is, but this has got to be done.
“The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government.”
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
Book III, 27
Variant translations:
The more corrupt the state, the more laws.
And now bills were passed, not only for national objects but for individual cases, and laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt.
Annals (117)
“Some laws are not written, but are more decisive than any written law.”
Quædam iura non scripta, sed omnibus scriptis certiora sunt.
Book I, Chapter I; slightly modified translation from Norman T. Pratt Seneca's Drama (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983) p. 140
Controversiae
“The more corrupt a society, the more numerous its laws.”
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)
