“QUOTE UNQUOTE”
October 14, 2011 § 1 Comment
Lawyer and Chancellor Sir Thomas More
“About half the practice of a decent lawyer consists of telling would-be clients that they are damned fools and should stop.” — Elihu Root
“They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters.” — Sir Thomas More, in Utopia
“An incompetent attorney can delay a trial for years or months. A competent attorney can delay one even longer.” — Evelle J. Younger
“QUOTE UNQUOTE”
October 7, 2011 § Leave a comment
The poet Gary Snyder
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” — Dr. Seuss
“Find your place on the planet, dig in, and take responsibility from there.” — Gary Snyder
“The question is not ‘Can you make a difference?’ You already do make a difference. It’s just a matter of what kind of difference you want to make during your life on this planet.” — Julia Butterfly Hill
“QUOTE UNQUOTE”
September 9, 2011 § Leave a comment
Big Bill Broonzy
“I worked on levee camps, extra gangs, road camps and rock quarries and every place, and I hear guys singing uh-hmmmm this and mmmmm that, and I want to get the thing plainly that the blues is something that’s from the heart — I know that, and whensoever you hear fellows singing the blues — I always believed it was a really heart thing, from his heart, you know, and it was expressing his feeling about how he felt to the people.” — Big Bill Broonzy
“We’re blues people. And blues never lets tragedy have the last word.” — Wynton Marsalis
“I fancied I could smell the Mississippi, which for me is southern America in a liquid form, signifying fried catfish, roasting ears dipped in butter, and watermelon in the cool of the evening, washed down with corn liquor and accompanied by the blues.” — Alan Lomax
“QUOTE UNQUOTE”
August 26, 2011 § Leave a comment
“I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours.” — John F. Kennedy
“Technology is a sprinter; the Law is a marathon runner.” — A.K.T. Rex
“For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three.” — Alice Kahn
“QUOTE UNQUOTE”
July 22, 2011 § Leave a comment
“By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, whereas in fact we live steeped in its burning layers.” — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“Sometimes I think that just not thinking of oneself is a form of prayer.” — Barbara Grizutti Harrison
“God answers all our prayers. Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes the answer is “You’ve got to be kidding.” — Jimmy Carter
“QUOTE UNQUOTE”
July 1, 2011 § Leave a comment
“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.”
“The color of truth is gray.”
“The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.”
— André Gide
NO WAY TO BREAK A DOG OF SUCKING EGGS
June 2, 2011 § Leave a comment
Oh, for the lost, effulgent epoch of mellifluous legal prose when only the most grandiloquent curlicues and glittering flourishes of the language graced the solomonic decrees of our learned justices.
Take this for example: “It is a fact of common knowledge that when a dog has once acquired the habit of egg-sucking there is no available way by which he may be broken of it, and that there is no calculable limit to his appetite in the indulgence of the habitual propensity.” How could this elemental principle underlying so much of our law be more succinctly and eloquently stated?
Thus Blogged Anderson offers his favorite from the 1900 MSSC decison in ICRR v. Johnson, which includes the memorable phrase: ” … the icecold law, from which no friction will excite sparks … “
And Tom Freeland, on NMisscommentor weighs in with his favorites, where you can find the cite to the egg-sucking-dog reference above, and the surprising identity of its author, as well as the case that includes the incisive and insightful quote: “It is not always conducive to domestic peace for a husband to contradict the statements of his wife … “
My bet is that the comments will produce at least a few more such gems. You should check them out.
“QUOTE UNQUOTE”
May 20, 2011 § Leave a comment
- The Dalai Lama and Bishop Desmond Tutu
“If money had been the way to save the world, Christ himself would have been rich.” — Phyllis Bottome
“Privilege, almost by definition, requires that someone pay the price for its enjoyment.” — Paula Ross
“It is very wrong for people to feel deeply sad when they lose some money, yet when they waste precious moments of their lives, they do not feel the slightest feeling of repentance.” — Dalai Lama
“QUOTE UNQUOTE”
April 8, 2011 § Leave a comment
The way I look
at it, I’m passing through a phase:
gradually I’m changing to a word.
Whatever you choose to claim
of me is always yours;
nothing is truly mine
except my name. I only
borrowed this dust.
— Stanley Kunitz
“QUOTE UNQUOTE”
March 4, 2011 § Leave a comment
“Those who dance were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.” — Angela Monet
“Dancing madly backwards
Dancing on a sea
Racing on my memories
I’m glad I set my dreams
Tip toe, tip toe quickly
Forget about your cares
And remember underneath you
Is just a sea of air” — Captain Beyond
“Perhaps sound is only an insanity of silence, a mad gibber of empty space grown fearful of listening to itself and hearing nothing.” — Steven Millhauser
The Better Chancery Practice Blog 