19th-century Judge Quotes

Masterly inactivity may be prudence to one man, desperate rashness to another.

Arthur Kekewich

Rest and motion, unrelieved and unchecked, are equally destructive.

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Power and courtly influence form an intoxicating draught even when raised to the lips of an ascetic and a saint.

James Fitzjames Stephen

The old idea of a good bargain was a transaction in which one man got the better of another. The new idea of a good contract is a transaction which is good for both parties to it.

I throw a kiss across the sea, I drink the winds as drinking wine, And dream they all are blown from thee, I catch the whisper'd kiss of thine.

When I hear of an 'equity' in a case like this, I am reminded of a blind man in a dark room—looking for a black hat—which isn't there.

Charles Bowen, Baron Bowen

Whatever may be the case in a Court of morals, there is no legal obligation on the vendor to inform the purchaser that he is under a mistake, not induced by the act of the vendor.

Colin Blackburn, Baron Blackburn

A learned County Court judge in a book of memoirs recently said that the overwhelming amount of his time on the bench was taken up with people who are persuaded by persons whom they do not know to enter into contracts that they do not understand to purchase goods that they do not want with money that they have not got.

Wilfred Greene, 1st Baron Greene

It would be almost unbelievable, if history did not record the tragic fact, that men have gone to war and cut each other's throats because they could not agree as to what was to become of them after their throats were cut.

Walter P. Stacy

No woman can become or remain degraded without all women suffering.

No rightly constituted mind can behold the wealth of beauty in the snow-flowers without being awed and humbled.

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan

A very ingenious attempt to drive a coach-and-four through this Act of Parliament.

Nathaniel Lindley, Baron Lindley

We will be completely exterminated, and the land will be left in the possession of the blacks, and then it will go back into a wilderness and become another Africa or St. Domingo.

Henry L. Benning