Law-makers should not be law-breakers.
Parliament has made it penal to pollute the air of towns with smoke, and the Builder complains that more smoke issues from parliament's own chimneys than from any six factories in London.
Abundance of law breaks no law.
It is safer to exceed than to fall short of what the law requires.
In a thousand pounds of law there is not an ounce of love.
A pennyweight of love is worth a pound weight of law.
So much more cogent is the one than the other.
Laws were made for rogues.
"For the upright there are no laws" (German).[746] They are designed to control those to whom it may be said,—
Ye wad do little for God if the deil were dead.—Scotch.
He that loves law will get his fill of it.
Agree, for the law is costly.
Law's costly; tak a pint and 'gree.—Scotch.
Lord Mansfield declared that if any man claimed a field from him he would give it up, provided the concession were kept secret, rather than engage in proceedings at law. Hesiod, in admonishing his brother always to prefer a friendly accommodation to a lawsuit, gave to the world the paradoxical proverb, "The half is more than the whole." Very often "A lean agreement is better than a fat lawsuit" (Italian).[747] "Lawyers' garments are lined with suitors' obstinacy" (Italian);[748] and "Their houses are built of fools' heads" (French).[749] Doctors and lawyers are notoriously shy of taking what they prescribe for others. "No good lawyer ever goes to law" (Italian).[750] Lord Chancellor Thurlow did so once, but in his case the exception approved the rule. A house had been built for him by contract, but he had made himself liable for more than the stipulated price by ordering some departures from the specification whilst the work was in progress. He refused to pay the additional charge; the builder brought an action and got a verdict against him, and surly Thurlow never afterwards set foot within the house which was the monument of his wrong-headedness and its chastisement.
Refer my coat, and lose a sleeve.—Scotch.
Arbitrators generally make both parties abate something of their pretensions.
Fair and softly, as lawyers go to heaven.
The odds are great against their ever getting there, if it be true that "Unless hell is full never will a lawyer be saved" (French).[751] "The greater lawyer, the worse Christian" (Dutch).[752] "'Virtue in the middle,' said the devil as he sat between two attorneys" (Danish).[753]
