Loving kindness is greater than laws; and the charities of life are more than all ceremonies.
Most codes extend their definitions of treason to acts not really against one’s country. They do not distinguish between acts against the government, and acts against the oppressions of the government. The latter are virtues, yet have furnished more victims to the executioner than the former, because real treasons are rare; oppressions frequent. The unsuccessful strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of treason laws in all countries. [ Report on Spanish Convention , 1792.]
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
There is a revolution coming. It will not be like revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual and with culture, and it will change the political structure only as its final act. It will not require violence to succeed, and it cannot be successfully resisted by violence. It is now spreading with amazing rapidity, and already our laws, institutions and social structure are changing in consequence. It promises a higher reason, a more human community, and a new and liberated individual. Its ultimate creation will be a new and enduring wholeness and beauty — a renewed relationship of man to himself, to other men, to society, to nature, and to the land. This is the revolution of the new generation.
"Honour thy father and thy mother" stands written among the three laws of most revered righteousness.
The stumbling-block to most minds is perhaps less the mere existence of the unseen than the want of definition, the apparently hopeless vagueness, and not least, the delight in this vagueness as mere vagueness by some who look upon this as the mark of quality in Spiritual things. It will be at least something to tell earnest seekers that the Spiritual World is not a castle in the air, of an architecture unknown to earth or heaven, but a fair ordered realm furnished with many familiar things and ruled by well-remembered Laws. Natural Law, Introduction, p. 26.
Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to
L'atrocite des lois en empeche l'execution=--The severity of the laws prevents the execution of them.
I know so little about God, sir. I’m so ignorant.” “You have a hungry heart, Rahab, and that’s all that God requires. I’m very proud of the progress you’ve made.” “Moses left so many laws. I’ll never learn them all.” “Oh, yes you will, because you’re eager to learn. True, there are many laws. Laws about what we can eat. Laws about the family. God is protecting us by giving us these laws. So you must be patient and study and ask God to help you.” “I will do that, sir, and I thank you for your help.
Nature does not cocker us; we are children, not pets; she is not fond; everything is dealt to us without fear or favour, after severe, universal laws.
I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad—as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth—so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane—quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.
People, crushed by laws, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous, more or less.
When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.
Who would have told your generals that the time was so near when they would give laws to the Church universal, and would call the refusal of such disorders war, _tot et tanta mala pacem_.
The fact that God has given the earth for the use and enjoyment of the whole human race can in no way be a bar to the owning of private property. For God has granted the earth to mankind in general, not in the sense that all without distinction can deal with it as they like, but rather that no part of it was assigned to any one in particular, and that the limits of private possession have been left to be fixed by man’s own industry, and by the laws of individual races. Moreover, the earth, even though apportioned among private owners, ceases not thereby to minister to the needs of all, inasmuch as there is not one who does not sustain life from what the land produces. Those who do not possess the soil contribute their labor; hence, it may truly be said that all human subsistence is derived either from labor on one’s own land, or from some toil, some calling, which is paid for either in the produce of the land itself, or in that which is exchanged for what the land brings forth. Here, again, we have further proof that private ownership is in accordance with the law of nature. Truly, that which is required for the preservation of life, and for life’s well-being, is produced in great abundance from the soil, but not until man has brought it into cultivation and expended upon it his solicitude and skill. Now, when man thus turns the activity of his mind and the strength of his body toward procuring the fruits of nature, by such act he makes his own that portion of nature’s field which he cultivates — that portion on which he leaves, as it were, the impress of his personality; and it cannot but be just that he should possess that portion as his very own, and have a right to hold it without any one being justified in violating that right. [ Rerum Novarum , §§ 7-8, 1891.]
Government and co-operation are in all things the laws of life; anarchy and competition, the laws of death.
What makes a man a good artist, a good sculptor, a good musician? Practice. . . . What makes a man a good man? Practice. Nothing else. There is nothing capricious about religion. We do not get the soul in different ways, under different laws, from those in which we get the body and the mind. The Greatest Thing in the World, p. 40.
_Office of Jesus Christ._--He alone was to produce a great people, elect, holy, and chosen, to lead it, to nourish it, to bring it into a place of rest and holiness, to make it holy to God, to make it the temple of God, to reconcile it to God, to save it from the wrath of God, to deliver it from the slavery of sin, which visibly reigns in man, to give laws to this people, to engrave these laws on their heart, to offer himself to God for them, to sacrifice himself for them, to be a victim without spot, himself the priest, needing to offer himself, his body and his blood, and yet to offer bread and wine to God....
Fear is the underminer of all determinations; and necessity, the victorious rebel of all laws.
Libertas in legibus=--Liberty under the laws.
I am for those that have never been master'd, For men and women whose tempers have never been master'd, For those whom laws, theories, conventions, can never master.
The Doctor, Chap. Extraordinary._ The laws are with us, and God on our side.
The worship of the nation has been able to make men tolerate under its authority what they could never have tolerated from princes: a submission to rule, which, through sumptuary laws on food and drink, through conscription, through a cast-iron system of compulsory instruction for all on State ordered lines, and through a State examination at the gate of every profession, has almost killed the citizen’s power to react upon that which controls him, and has almost destroyed that variety which is the mark of life. [ Survivals and New Arrivals: The Old and New Enemies of the Catholic Church . Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1992, p. 84.]
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.
It is of more importance to teach manners and customs than to establish laws and tribunals.
Oh, that my lot might lead me in the path of holy purity of thought and deed, the path which august laws ordain--laws which in the highest heaven had their birth; ... The power of God is mighty in them, and doth not wax old.
Things have their laws as well as men; and things refuse to be trifled with.
Many people today do not understand that the sole purpose of government is to protect these higher laws, and when government serves no longer as our protector, then they have become our oppressor and thereby a threat to our families and the liberty on which this great nation was founded.
Es erben sich Gesetz' und Rechte / Wie eine ewige Krankheit fort=--Laws and rights descend like an inveterate inherited disease.
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
Since these things are far more ancient than letters, it is no wonder if in our day no records exist to tell how these seas filled so many countries. But if some record had existed, conflagrations, floods, wars, changes of tongues and laws have consumed all that is ancient; sufficient for us is the testimony of objects born in the salt waters and found again in the high mountains far off from the seas of those times.
Thou shining supplement of public laws!--_Young._
Therefore those governing the State ought primarily to devote themselves to the service of individual groups and of the whole commonwealth, and through the entire scheme of laws and institutions to cause both public and individual well-being to develop spontaneously out of the very structure and administration of the state. [ Rerum Novarum, Op. cit. , §48, 1891.]
La raison seule peut faire des lois obligatoires et durables=--Reason alone can render laws binding and stable.
While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control. A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules…. The thirst for power and possessions knows no limit. In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of the deified market, which become the only rule. [ Evangelii Gaudium , op. cit., §56, Nov. 26, 2013.]
The Prince himself has no distinction, either of garments, or of a crown; but is only distinguished by a sheaf of corn carried before him; as the high priest is also known by his being preceded by a person carrying a wax light. They have but few laws, and such is their constitution that they need not many. They very much condemn other nations whose laws, together with the commentaries on them, swell up to so many volumes; for they think it an unreasonable thing to oblige men to obey a body of laws that are both of such a bulk, and so dark as not to be read and understood by every one of the subjects.
Orator improbus leges subvertit=--An evil-disposed orator subverts the laws.
Make your educational laws strict, and your criminal ones may be gentle; but leave youth its liberty, and you will have to dig dungeons for age.
The conviction grows in me that we shall discover laws of personality and behavior which are as significant for human progress or human understanding as the law of gravity or the laws of thermodynamics.
Man is the maker of expedients, but not of laws. In his solicitude as to his approaching lot, he has neither time nor desire to raise his eyes to the heavens to watch and record their phenomena; no leisure to look upon himself and consider what and where he is. In the imperious demand for a present support, he dare not venture on speculative attempts at ameliorating his state; he is doomed to be a helpless, isolated, spellbound savage, or, if not isolated, the companion of other savages as careworn as himself.
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.
Like everything else in nature, music is a becoming, and it becomes its full self when its sounds and laws are used by intelligent man for the production of harmony, and so made the vehicle of emotion and thought.
Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
Juris utriusque doctor=--Doctor of both laws, civil and canon.
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night; / God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light.
The end of society is peace and mutual protection, so that the individual may reach the fullest and highest life attainable by man. The rules of conduct by which this end is to be attained are discoverable--like the other so-called laws of Nature--by observation and experiment, and only in that way.
There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.
Curse on all laws but those which love has made!
All laws are simulations of reality.
after Death._ The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom.
Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
Hence if man goes on selecting, and thus augmenting, any peculiarity, he will almost certainly modify unintentionally other parts of the structure, owing to the mysterious laws of correlation.
Leges mori serviunt=--Laws are subordinate to custom.
It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom. The universe as a whole is also weird, with laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.
Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size. MARK TWAIN
_Politics._--We have found two obstacles to the design of comforting men. The one the interior laws of the Gospel, the other the exterior laws of the State and of Religion.
The practice of that which is ethically best--what we call goodness or virtue--involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help his fellows; its influence is directed, not so much to the survival of the fittest, as to the fitting of as many as possible to survive. It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence. It demands that each man who enters into the enjoyment of the advantages of a polity shall be mindful of his debt to those who have laboriously constructed it: and shall take heed that no act of his weakens the fabric in which he has been permitted to live. Laws and moral precepts are directed to the end of curbing the cosmic process and reminding the individual of his duty to the community, to the protection and influence of which he owes, if not existence itself, at least the life of something better than a brutal savage.
Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse.
Judicium parium aut leges terr?=--The judgment of our peers or the laws of the land.
So far as the laws of conduct are determined by the intellect, I apprehend that they belong to science, and to that part of science which is called morality. But the engagement of the affections in favour of that particular kind of conduct which we call good, seems to me to be something quite beyond mere science. And I cannot but think that it, together with the awe and reverence, which have no kinship with base fear, but arise whenever one tries to pierce below the surface of things, whether they be material or spiritual, constitutes all that has any unchangeable reality in religion.
States would perish if they did not often make their laws bend to necessity, but Religion has never suffered this or practised it. And indeed there must be either compromise or miracles. There is nothing unusual in being saved by yielding, and strictly speaking this is not endurance, besides in the end they perish utterly: there is none which has endured a thousand years. But that this Religion, although inflexible, should always have been maintained, shows that it is divine.
It is impossible to predict the time and progress of revolution. It is governed by its own more or less mysterious laws.
Die Gesetze der Moral sind auch die der Kunst=--The laws of morals are also those of art.
The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom. For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others, which cannot be where there is no law. [ Second Essay Concerning Civil Government . p. 37, para. 57.]
Tout est contradiction chez nous: la France, a parler serieusement, est le royaume de l'esprit et de la sottise, de l'industrie et de la paresse, de la philosophie et du fanatisme, de la gaiete et du pedantisme, des loix et des abus, de bon gout et de l'impertinence=--With us all is inconsistency. France, seriously speaking, is the country of wit and folly, of industry and idleness, of philosophy and fanaticism, of gaiety and pedantry, laws and their abuses, good taste and impertinence.
"Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
New laws, new frauds.
God never pardons; the laws of the universe are irrevocable. God always pardons; sense of condemnation is but another word for penitence, and penitence is already new life.
The book containing this law, the first of all laws, is itself the most ancient book in the world, those of Homer, Hesiod and others dating from six or seven hundred years later.
Painting has a wider intellectual range and is more wonderful and greater as regards its artistic resources than sculpture, because the painter is by necessity constrained to amalgamate his mind with the very mind of nature and to be the interpreter between nature and art, making with art a commentary on the causes of nature's manifestations which are the inevitable result of its laws; and showing in what way the likenesses of objects which surround the eye correspond with the true images of the pupil of the eye, and showing among objects of equal size which of them will appear more or less dark, or more or less clear; and among objects equally low which of them will appear more or less low; or among those of the same height which of them will appear more or less high; or among objects of equal size {99} placed at various distances one from the other, why some will appear more clearly than others. And this art embraces and comprehends within itself all visible things, which sculpture in its poverty cannot do: that is, the colours of all objects and their gradations; it represents transparent objects, and the sculptor will show thee natural objects without the painter's devices; the painter will show thee various distances with the gradations of colour producing interposition of the air between the objects and the eye; he will show thee the mists through which the character of objects is with difficulty descried; the rains which clouded mountains and valleys bring with them; the dust which is inherent to and follows the contention between these forces; the rivers which are great or small in volume; the fishes disporting themselves on the surface or at the bottom of these waters; the polished pebbles of various colours which are collected on the washed sands at bottom of rivers surrounded by floating plants beneath the surface of the water; the stars at diverse heights above us; and in the same manner other innumerable effects to which sculpture cannot attain.
Les m?urs du prince contribuent autant a la liberte que les lois=--The manners of the prince conduce as much to liberty as the laws.
It is very little that we can ever know of the ways of Providence or the laws of existence; but that little is enough, and exactly enough.
Practically men have come to imagine that the laws of this universe, like the laws of constitutional countries, are decided by voting; that it is all a study of division-lists, and for the universe too depends a little on the activity of the whippers-in.
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
The laws in a democracy are always true exponents of the character, the tastes, habits, and passions of the people. The dominant passion of our people at the present moment is the acquisition of material wealth, either for its own sake, or for the sake of the ease, independence, and distinction it is supposed to be able to secure. Take any ten thousand men at random, and ask them what they most desire of government, and they will answer you, if they answer you honestly, — Such laws as will facilitate the acquisition of wealth. The facilitating of the acquisition of wealth is at the bottom of every question which has any bearing on our elections. Let these men vote, and they will vote for such laws as they believe will most effectually secure this end. But suppose such laws to be enacted, how many out of the ten thousand will be in a condition to take advantage of them? Certainly, not more than one in a hundred. There will be, then, nine thousand and nine hundred men joining with one hundred to enact laws which in their operation are for the exclusive benefit of the one hundred. The whole action, the inevitable action, of every popular government, where wealth is the dominant passion of the people , is to foster the continued growth of inequality of property. The tendency of all laws passed, if passed by the many, will be to concentrate the property in the hands of the few, because each one who aids in passing them hopes that his will be the hands in which it is to be concentrated; — at least, such will be the tendency, till matters become so bad that the many in their madness and desperation are driven to attempt the insane remedy of agrarian laws [redistribution of landed property /so as to achieve a uniform division of land — OED ]. When, under our new system of industry, which allows little personal intercourse between landlord and tenant, proprietor and operative, which connects the operative simply with the mill and the overseer, the concentration of property in a few hands becomes general, it involves the most fatal results. [ Brownson’s Quarterly Review , January, 1846.]