Quotes and Proverbs

 

 

1	Home is home, as the devil said when he found himself in the Court of Session.  - English
2	lawyer's opinion is worth nothing unless paid for.  - English
3	A client twixt his attorney and counsellor is like a goose twixt two foxes.  - English
4	A good lawyer, an evil neighbor.  - English, French, Spanish
5	God save us from a lawyer's etcetera.  - French
6	Preachers purge the conscience, doctors the body, lawyers the purse. - German
7	Lawyers and soldiers are the devil's playmates.- German
8	Go to law for a sheep and lose your cow.  - German
9	A lawyer and a wagon-wheel must be well greased.  - German
10	New laws are followed by new tricks.  - German
11	The better lawyer, the worse Christian.  - Dutch
12	"Virtue is in the middle," said the devil, as he sat down between two lawyers.  - Danish
13	Lawyers and painters can soon change black to white.  - Danish
14	One goes to court with one lawsuit and comes home with two.  - Danish
15	A lawsuit is a fruit-tree planted in a lawyer's garden.  - Italian
16	A bad agreement is better than a good lawyer.  - Italian
17	A happy death is better than a lawsuit.  - Spanish
18	A peasant between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.  - Catalan
19	Law is a flag and gold is the wind that makes it wave.  - Russian
20	When God wanted to chastise man He invented lawyers.  - Russian
21	"I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters."  - John Keats, letter to George & Georgiana Keats, 13 March 1819
22	Lawyers are like rhinoceroses: thick-skinned, short-sighted, and always ready to charge. - David Mellor, Question Time, BBC1, 3 December 1992
23	When two dogs fight for a bone and a third runs off with it, there's a lawyer among the dogs. - German proverb
24	Doctors and lawyers must go to school for years and years, often with little sleep and with great sacrifice to their first wives.  - Roy Blount
25	Love all men but not lawyers  - Irish Proverb
26	"Have you a criminal lawyer in this burg?" "We think so, but we haven't been able to prove it on him yet."  - Carl Sandburg, The People, Yes, 1936
27	The lawyers rejected the counsel of God.  - Luke 7:30
28	Woe unto you, lawyers!  - Ibid., 11:52
29	When you have no basis for argument, abuse the plaintiff.  - Cicero, Pro Flacco
30	The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.  - Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, c. 1591
31	My suit has nothing to do with the assault, or battery, or poisoning, but is about three goats, which, I complain, have been stolen by my neighbor. This the judge desires to have proved to him; but you, with swelling words and extravagant gestures, dilate on the Battle of Cannae, the Mithridatic war, and the perjuries of the insensate Carthaginians, the Syllae, the Marii, and the Mucii. It is time, Postumus, to say something about my three goats.  - Martial, Epigrams, VI.
32	Lawyers use the law as shoemakers use leather; rubbing it, pressing it, and stretching it with their teeth, all to the end of making it fit their purposes.  - Ascribed to Louis XII of France (1462-1515)
33	Among the learned the lawyers claim first place, the most self-satisfied class of people, as they roll their rock of Sisyphus and string together six hundred laws in the same breath, no matter whether relevant or not, piling up opinion on opinion and gloss on gloss to make their profession seem the most difficult of all. Anything which causes trouble has special merit in their eyes.  - Desiderius Erasmus, Praise of Folly, 1509
34	One thing I supplicate your majesty: that you will give orders, under a great penalty, that no bachelors of law should be allowed to come here [the New World]; for not only are they bad themselves, but they also make and contrive a thousand inequities.  - Vasco Nuñez de Balboa to Ferdinand V of Spain, 1513
35	[The Utopians] have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters.  - Sir Thomas More, Utopia, c. 1516
36	There is no cause so bad which does not find a lawyer to defend it.  - François Rabelais, Pantagruel, 1532
37	Little money, little law.  - Anonymous, The Parliament of Byrdes, c. 1550
38	Such poor folk as to law do go are driven oft to curse: But in mean while, the Lawyer thrives, the money in his purse.  - Isabella Whitney, A Sweet Nosegay or Pleasant Posye Containing a Hundred and Ten Phylosophicall Flowers, 1573
39	Lawyers and physicians are an ill provision for any country.  - Michel de Montaigne, Essays, III, 1588
40	A man may as well open an oyster without a knife as a lawyer's mouth without a fee.  - Barten Holyday, Technogamia, 1618
41	The devil makes his Christmas-pie of lawyers' tongues and clerks' fingers.  - Thomas Adams, Sermons, 1629
42	Lawyers are accounted knaves over all the country.  - Anonymous, The Countryman's Care, 1641
43	These men of Law and their confederates ... the caterpillars of this Kingdom, who with their uncontrolled exactions and extortions, eat up the free-born people of this Nation.  - Bathsua Makin, The Malady ... and Remedy of Vexations and Unjust Arrests and Actions, 1646
44	Litigious terms, fat contentions, and flowing fees.  - John Milton, Tractate on Education
45	With books and money plac'd, for show, Like nest-eggs, to make clients lay, And for his false opinions pay.  No lawyer will ever go to heaven so long as there is room for more in hell.  - French proverb
46	"Yes, Jamie, he was a bad man, but he might have been worse; he was an Irishman, but he might have been a Scotchman; he was a priest, but he might have been a lawyer."  - Samuel Parr of James O'Coighy, hanged for treason on 7 June 1798
47	Few lawyers die well, few physicians live well.  - English proverb
48	Ye who plead for the poor, and take money at their hands. Ye lawyers, ye advocates, be sure of this: When ye draw near to death, and pray for pardon, Your pardon at your parting hence will be but small. - Saint Matthew bids me tell you this, and if I lie, blame him William Langland, Piers Plowman, 14th century
49	Here lies John Shaw, Attorney-at-law; And when he died, The Devil cried, "Give us your paw, John Shaw Attorney-at-law!"  - H. J. Loaring, Epitaphs Quaint, Curious and Elegant, 1872
50	Why does a hearse horse snicker Hauling a lawyer away?  - Carl Sandburg, The Lawyers Know Too Much, 1920
51	Daniel Webster: You seem to have an excellent acquaintance with the law, sir.  The Devil: Sir, that is no fault of mine. Where I come from, we have always gotten the pick of the Bar.  - Stephen Vincent Benét, The Devil and Daniel Webster, 1939
52	He saw a lawyer killing a viper On a dunghill hard by his own stable, And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind Of Cain and his brother Abel. - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Devil's Thoughts, 1799

 

 

Law Jokes