“Our civil laws will never be supple enough to fit the immense and changing variety of facts. Laws change more slowly than custom, and though dangerous when they fall behind the times are more dangerous still when they presume to anticipate custom.”
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
Original
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.
Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Marguerite Yourcenar 37
French writer 1903–1987Related quotes
“When laws, customs, or institutions cease to be beneficial to man, they cease to be obligatory.”
Source: Life Thoughts (1858), p. 34
20
Daybreak — Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality (1881)
Source: Relatives (1973)., Chapter 11 (p. 174).
“There is far more danger of harm than there is hope of good in any radical changes.”
Source: 1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)
“The higher a statue is raised, the harder and more dangerous the impact when it falls.”
#269
The Furrow (1986)
Source: Law and Authority (1886), II
Context: Relatively speaking, law is a product of modern times. For ages and ages mankind lived without any written law, even that graved in symbols upon the entrance stones of a temple. During that period, human relations were simply regulated by customs, habits, and usages, made sacred by constant repetition, and acquired by each person in childhood, exactly as he learned how to obtain his food by hunting, cattle-rearing, or agriculture.
All human societies have passed through this primitive phase, and to this day a large proportion of mankind have no written law. Every tribe has its own manners and customs; customary law, as the jurists say. It has social habits, and that suffices to maintain cordial relations between the inhabitants of the village, the members of the tribe or community. Even amongst ourselves — the "civilized" nations — when we leave large towns, and go into the country, we see that there the mutual relations of the inhabitants are still regulated according to ancient and generally accepted customs, and not according to the written law of the legislators.
On the female gender (as quoted in https://www.zikoko.com/life/oldies/9-thought-provoking-quotes-from-the-literary-icon-buchi-emecheta/).
4 Burr. Part IV., 2368.
Dissenting in Millar v Taylor (1769)