Related quotes: Laws, as we read in...

The Wolf And Shepherds. A Fable

Laws, as we read in ancient sages,
Have been like cobwebs in all ages:
Cobwebs for little flies are spread,
And laws for little folks are made;
But if an insect of renown,
Hornet or beetle, wasp or drone,
Be caught in quest of sport or plunder,
The flimsy fetter flies in sunder.
Your simile perhaps may please one
With whom wit holds the place of reason:
But can you prove that this in fact is
Agreeable to life and practice?
Then hear, what in his simple way
Old Æsop told me t' other day.
In days of yore, but (which is very odd)
Our author mentions not the period,
We mortal men, less given to speeches,
Allow'd the beasts sometimes to teach us.
But now we all are prattlers grown,
And suffer no voice but our own;
With us no beast has leave to speak,
Although his honest heart should break.
'Tis true, your asses and your apes,
And other brutes in human shapes,
And that thing made of sound and show,
Which mortals have misnamed a beau,
(But in the language of the sky
Is call'd a two-legg'd butterfly),
Will make your very heartstrings ache
With loud and everlasting clack,
And beat your auditory drum,
Till you grow deaf, or they grow dumb.
But to our story we return:
'Twas early on a Summer morn,
A Wolf forsook the mountain den,
And issued hungry on the plain.
Full many a stream and lawn he past
And reach'd a winding vale at last;
Where from a hollow rock he spied
The shepherds drest in flowery pride.
Garlands were strew'd, and all was gay,
To celebrate a holiday.
The merry tabor's gamesome sound
Provoked the sprightly dance around.
Hard by a rural board was rear'd,
On which in fair array appear'd
The peach, the apple, and the raisin,
And all the fruitage of the season.
But, more distinguish'd than the rest,
Was seen a wether ready drest,
That smoking, recent from the flame,
Diffused a stomach-rousing steam.
Our Wolf could not endure the sight,
Courageous grew his appetite:
His entrails groan'd with tenfold pain,
He lick'd his lips, and lick'd again:
At last, with lightning in his eyes,
He bounces forth, and fiercely cries:
'Shepherds, I am not given to scolding,
But now my spleen I cannot hold in.
By Jove, such scandalous oppression
Would put an elephant in passion.
You, who your flocks (as you pretend)
By wholesome laws from harm defend,
Which make it death for any beast,
How much soe'er by hunger press'd,
To seize a sheep by force or stealth,
For sheep have right to life and health;
Can you commit, uncheck'd by shame,
What in a beast so much you blame?
What is a law, if those who make it
Become the forwardest to break it?
The case is plain: you would reserve
All to yourselves, while others starve.
Such laws from base self-interest spring,
Not from the reason of the thing—'
He was proceeding, when a swain
Burst out,—'And dares a wolf arraign
His betters, and condemn their measures,
And contradict their wills and pleasures?
We have establish'd laws, 'tis true,
But laws are made for such as you.
Know, sirrah, in its very nature
A law can't reach the legislature.
For laws, without a sanction join'd,
As all men know, can never bind;
But sanctions reach not us the makers,
For who dares punish us, though breakers?
'Tis therefore plain, beyond denial,
That laws were ne'er design'd to tie all;
But those, whom sanctions reach alone:
We stand accountable to none.
Besides, 'tis evident, that, seeing
Laws from the great derive their being,
They as in duty bound should love
The great, in whom they live and move,
And humbly yield to their desires:
'Tis just what gratitude requires.
What suckling, dandled on the lap,
Would tear away its mother's pap?
But hold—Why deign I to dispute
With such a scoundrel of a brute?
Logic is lost upon a knave,
Let action prove the law our slave.'
An angry nod his will declared
To his gruff yeoman of the guard;
The full-fed mongrels, train'd to ravage,
Fly to devour the shaggy savage.
The beast had now no time to lose
In chopping logic with his foes;
'This argument,' quoth he, 'has force,
And swiftness is my sole resource.'
He said, and left the swains their prey,
And to the mountains scour'd away.

poem by James Beattie
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!

Related quotes

Law

Laws, as we read in ancient sages,
Have been like cobwebs in all ages.
Cobwebs for little flies are spread,
And laws for little folks are made;
But if an insect of renown,
Hornet or beetle, wasp or drone,
Be caught in quest of sport or plunder,
The flimsy fetter flies in sunder.

poem by James Beattie
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!

The Inner Voice - Conscience

Laws on earth can be made, unmade;
Laws can be bettered or worsened by change;
Laws may be just or unjust and never perfect;
Laws can be changed for comfort and convenience.

Laws may change from time to time;
Laws cannot reflect truth always;
Laws depend on the constituent makers;
Laws can never be ideal for all times!

But the inner Voice -the Conscience is static;
It always speaks the truth irrevocably;
It is not transmutable anytime;
It can never lie ever even by chance.

The Inner Voice scores over laws always;
One's conscience always tells what is right;
Freedom of man's conscience is paramount;
Laws to stifle the Inner Voice are simply futile!

Laws are needed but must be just and fair;
Laws aren't needed to fetter the conscience;
Laws are man-made and transmutable;
Conscience is God-given, remaining the same in everyone!

Obey the laws when they are fair and just;
Heed to your Conscience, God's law-maker within!

poem by John Celes
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!

The Laws of God, The Laws of Man

The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
Please yourselves, say I, and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not; they must still
Wrest their neighbor to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hell-fire.
And how am I to face the odds
Of man's bedevilment and God's?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong.
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn nor to Mercury,
Keep we must, if keep we can,
These foreign laws of God and man.

poem by Alfred Edward Housman
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!

But black people fall for that same argument, and they go around talking about law breakers. We did not make the laws in this country. We are neither morally nor legally confined to those laws. Those laws that keep them up, keep us down.

quote by H. Rap Brown
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!

We must not try to force him to take civilization immediately in its complete form, but under just laws, guaranteeing to Indians equal civil laws, the Indian question, a source of such dishonor to our country and of shame to true patriots, will soon be a thing of the past.

quote by George Crook
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!

Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood … progress is the law of nature; under God it shall be our eternal guiding star.

quote by Booker T. Washington
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
Vote! | Copy!

Wise-Men

Who told you that Heaven is for free? ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You better learn the laws and be free!
For the ticket to Heaven is to follow the laws.

The laws were made for our learning and,
Mankind need to follow them to gain Heaven!
For the Wise-Men followed the laws too and they met the Star.

poem by Edward Kofi Louis
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!

Laws XIII

Then a lawyer said, "But what of our Laws, master?"

And he answered:

You delight in laying down laws,

Yet you delight more in breaking them.

Like children playing by the ocean who build sand-towers with constancy and then destroy them with laughter.

But while you build your sand-towers the ocean brings more sand to the shore,

And when you destroy them, the ocean laughs with you.

Verily the ocean laughs always with the innocent.

But what of those to whom life is not an ocean, and man-made laws are not sand-towers,

But to whom life is a rock, and the law a chisel with which they would carve it in their own likeness?

What of the cripple who hates dancers?

What of the ox who loves his yoke and deems the elk and deer of the forest stray and vagrant things?

What of the old serpent who cannot shed his skin, and calls all others naked and shameless?

And of him who comes early to the wedding-feast, and when over-fed and tired goes his way saying that all feasts are violation and all feasters law-breakers?

What shall I say of these save that they too stand in the sunlight, but with their backs to the sun?

They see only their shadows, and their shadows are their laws.

And what is the sun to them but a caster of shadows?

And what is it to acknowledge the laws but to stoop down and trace their shadows upon the earth?

But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you?

You who travel with the wind, what weathervane shall direct your course?

What man's law shall bind you if you break your yoke but upon no man's prison door?

What laws shall you fear if you dance but stumble against no man's iron chains?

And who is he that shall bring you to judgment if you tear off your garment yet leave it in no man's path?

People of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?

poem by Khalil Gibran
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!

But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

quote by Franklin D. Roosevelt
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!

At the heart of these challenges lies the question of how the institutions of the European Union make laws, the types of laws they pass and the effectiveness with which those laws are implemented on civil society and the economy.

quote by John Hutton
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!

Sonnet: Laws Are For All

No one on earth can be above the law;
But laws are not the same for man world-o’er;
When lawmakers break laws, it causes awe;
Yet, criminals must get jud’cial cover.

But laws, vary from time to time you see,
And innocents to gallows could sent;
Can all afford the exorbitant fees?
Delaying justice can produced a dent.

But corruption has gained mighty in-roads;
And not a field is spared from its illness;
The world is filled by spineless man like toads;
Cities and towns too look like wilderness.

No soul on earth can be above the law;
And yet, men make the laws sometimes so raw.

poem by John Celes
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!

nature’s laws are encoded God’s laws
interlocking interrelated creation laws
time space big bang conception secrets

haiku by Terence George Craddock
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!

Let me not be understood as saying that there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example they should be religiously observed.

quote by Abraham Lincoln
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!

If all consciousness is subject to essential laws in a manner similar to that in which spatial reality is subject to mathematical laws, then these essential laws will be of most fertile significance in investigating facts of the conscious life of human and brute animals.

quote by Edmund Husserl
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!

0004 Love and law; law and love

Law of love? Sounds good… so, tell me more…
Love of law? mmm…maybe…not so sure…

You can disregard the ancients –
label them Not Applicable – bin that bulky file…
or try to make some sense; and they insist
that love and law are so close intertwined
that together, they may tell
more than each other taken individually.
What might this mean? Where can we start?

Those ancients say that all this universe,
all this creation, is one single act of love;
love brings it forth, sustains it, nourishes it,
and so ultimately, it merges into love;

and by the laws of love,
which hold all forms by law,
our natural state is naught but love;
and knowing this, knows no injustice in ourself;
knows all as equal; knows no pressures nor compulsions;
knows no darkness; and no partiality or preferentiality;
and partaking of this universal love,
we’re therefore just, and light of heart,
and ready of response..

and so, this love, which knows ourself as love,
(for every creature's nature is pure love)
may love the laws which make our nature thus;
love the laws of love, and live as love;
so out of love, comes law;
and out of law, comes love.

only in this fleeting moment of the present
is our life lived;
and only if, in this continuous now,
love and law are present in each action,
may we make our golden future;
live a golden life, where law has made us free.

this, the ancients say; the proof is ours to live.

poem by Michael Shepherd
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!

The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty... and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the guilty alone ought to suffer? Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. They ought to be designated as laws not preventive but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree.

quote by Cesare Beccaria
Submitted by Simona Enache
Vote! | Copy!

Political realism believes that politics, like society in general, is governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature. In order to improve society it is first necessary to understand the laws by which society lives. The operation of these laws being impervious to our preferences, men will challenge them only at the risk of failure. Realism, believing as it does in the objectivity of the laws of politics, must also believe in the possibility of developing a rational theory that reflects, however imperfectly and one-sidedly, these objective laws. It believes also, then, in the possibility of distinguishing in politics between truth and opinion — between what is true objectively and rationally, supported by evidence and illuminated by reason, and what is only a subjective judgment, divorced from the facts as they are and informed by prejudice and wishful thinking.

quote by Hans Morgenthau
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
Vote! | Copy!

Kingdom Of Zion!

You have to enter into the Kingdom of Zion!
But, you have the Laws beside you and,
You have to be righteous! !
And, you have to live a peaceful life.

You have to follow the Laws for,
Your mission over there is for total peace and love;
Without hatred, fighting and wars! !
For, that is rthe only place where the laws are practiced.

Oh, come and enter in to the Kingdom of Zion!
Where, the Laws and the Prophetic Words are taught;
For, we all need this Kingdom to live in peace with each other.

poem by Edward Kofi Louis
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!

Laws

Laws created to curb the rise of domestic violence.
Laws created to curb the rise of racial tensions.
Laws created to curb interpretations,
Of what is and what is not politically correct.
But those who are corrupted and create the laws...
Can not see their own flaws,
That initiate the mess.

Laws created to curb a racial profiling on the rise.
Laws created to curb a greed that has affected lives.
Laws that limit freedoms to blatantly discriminate...
Those who do this anyway,
No matter what the laws are to perpetuate a hate.

And those upset by these laws,
Want more of them and yet neglect!
Like 'Commandments' given no respect.

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!

We're a nation of laws, but the good thing about America, is that laws reside in the people and people can change the laws.

quote by Rick Warren
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!

En.Citatepedia®.ro