Source: The Moonlit Road and Other Ghost and Horror Stories
“Blind counsels of the wicked! Crime cowardly ever!”
O caeca nocentum
consilia! o semper timidum scelus!
Source: Thebaid, Book II, Line 489
The Never-Ending Wrong (1977)
Context: The trial of Jesus of Nazareth, the trial and rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, any one of the witchcraft trials in Salem during 1691, the Moscow trials of 1937 during which Stalin destroyed all of the founders of the 1924 Soviet Revolution, the Sacco-Vanzetti trial of 1920 through 1927 — there are many trials such as these in which the victim was already condemned to death before the trial took place, and it took place only to cover up the real meaning: the accused was to be put to death. These are trials in which the judge, the counsel, the jury, and the witnesses are the criminals, not the accused. For any believer in capital punishment, the fear of an honest mistake on the part of all concerned is cited as the main argument against the final terrible decision to carry out the death sentence. There is the frightful possibility in all such trials as these that the judgment has already been pronounced and the trial is just a mask for murder.
“The troublesome ones in a family are usually either the wits or the idiots.”
Source: Middlemarch
“When one sense has been bribed the others readily bear false witness.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 207
“Never take counsel of your fears.”
Quoted as "a favorite maxim" of Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson in Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson by His Widow, Mary Anna Jackson, Prentice Press/Courier Journal, 1895; ch. XIII p. 264 archive.org http://archive.org/stream/memoirsstonewal00jackgoog#page/n306/mode/2up%20Seite%20264%20archive.org.
Without any reference to Jackson in: Conversations of Our Club. Brownson's Quarterly Review, October 1858. p. 459 books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=wQ7ZAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA459&dq=counsel
Misattributed
[McKenzie, Joi-Marie, Why Author Jason Reynolds Writes For The Youngest Generation, https://www.essence.com/entertainment/author-jason-reynolds/, Essence, 10 March 2020, February 12, 2020]
“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”
“Don't hate me forever, Arty," whispered Holly. "I couldn't bear that.”
Source: The Last Guardian
On the practice of poetry in “Ariana Reines Knows That Not All Surrender Is Bad” https://nylon.com/ariana-reines-sand-book-interview in Nylon Magazine (2019 Oct 15)
