From “Centennial History Of
By Walter B Stevens
1921
A book of
“Every law suit is hatched from an egg or grown from a seed.”
“What cannot be done in a straight line (as the bee flies) may not be done in a roundabout way (as the fox runs).”
“An eagle does not catch flies, so equity deals not with mere trifles in a search for fraud.”
“Restitution is the beginning of reformation, even as the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
“In times past, when Satan ‘squat like a toad close to the ear of Eve,’ spoiled the felicity of the race by his suggestions to that new (and somewhat inexperienced) woman, it was promulgated as a rule, ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat braed.’”
“If one is not to get a stone who asks for bread, no more is he to get water who asks for milk.”
“In jurisprudence, as in the other serious affairs of mankind, a mountain is not made out of a mole hill. Those judges who strain at gnats are in the same category as those who swallow camels.”
“A New trial is a loaf baked in the oven of the law to be sociably shared by both parties.”
“A fair test of the matter is to put the shoe on the other foot.”
“What the Legislature has joined together, we ought not to put asunder.”
“The use of a given word often makes the stroke that of a feather. The use of another may make the stroke that of a hammer.”
“Plaintiffs go into court voluntarily; defendants (speaking in fireside figure) are pulled in by the ears.”
“His legs go far and fast who is running to a goal of gain and honor.”
“Courts should not be more ignorant than any one else. Hence courts should not pretend not to know what every one else knows.”
“We take judicial notice that the need of money is an abiding infirmity, natural and common to all men.”
“There is a precept that every man is presumed to know the law –except the road law.”
“Old Polybius says sourly, ‘man is the most gullible of all animals.”
“In deciding cases it is a very good rule never to decide in the present case what can be better decided in the next case.”
“Running in debt is easy and pleasant while it lasts, --paying is another story.”
“However much the cow waters her own milk, the milkman has no right to designedly duplicate nature’s gift of water by a furtive gift of his own from the barnyard pump.: